Manage Access and Identity with Ease
Businesses have invested tremendous time and money ensuring that remote workers can access applications and data from any device at any time – whether that data lives in the organization’s on-premises data center behind traditional security defenses or in the cloud. Due to COVID, many businesses had to make mobility happen – almost overnight.
Unfortunately, threat actors know this as well. They are targeting users with malware, phishing and social engineering scams on potentially vulnerable BYOD or new, not-properly-secured devices. Breaches that result in the theft of valid credentials are on the rise.
Solutions for IAM
In this age of breach, identity and access management (IAM) — a foundational element of a Zero Trust strategy – makes it safer for users to access apps and data from their connected devices, whether those devices are BYOD smartphones and tablets or whether they are new, work-owned laptops set up on a kitchen table. IAM lets companies harden defenses against attack even when something as nebulous as people and their mobile devices are the new perimeter.
Specifically, IAM is about defining and managing the roles and access privileges of individual users — this includes customers, contractors, suppliers, and partners as well as employees — and the context in which users are granted (or denied) those privileges.
Identity and Access Management involves a lot of “rights.” Work with Structured to provide the right people, with the right level of access, to the right resources, in the right context in a centralized technology framework that is automated for continuous assessment and management.
Identity and Access Management
IAM systems simplify access and adherence to security protocols, corporate policies, and government regulations – both for systems administrators and users. They are centralized, automated, orchestrated, and frictionless.
Multifactor Authentication
Security-minded organizations — especially those with distributed workforces also turn to multifactor (or at least two-factor) authentication (MFA) to add an extra layer of protection when end users try to access corporate applications and data. In the case of two-factor authentication, users are challenged to provide something they know (such as a password) and something they have (such as SMS confirmation on an approved smartphone).
True MFA takes the sign-in process one step farther in that it requires something you are — provided by facial recognition, iris scan, or fingerprint.
Network Access Control
A predecessor of modern IAM is network access control (NAC). NAC has been used for many years to grant endpoints — which could be a BYOD smartphone or an IoT device like a pacemaker — access to network resources once the system authenticates and authorizes that device. Most wireless vendors have built NAC into their onboarding platforms and the technology is meant to integrate easily with different types of endpoints and security products.
Deploying NAC, like newer IAM platforms, requires a lot of up-front planning and policy development but pays dividends when it is automated and working well. Structured’s engineers and compliance professionals have a lot of experience guiding clients in how to best deploy this technology.
Structured Professional Spotlight
Brad Pierce, Managing Director of Security, CISSP/CISA/PCIP
As the Managing Director of Security for Structured, Brad leads an elite team of security and compliance professionals and ensures the Structured team is prepared to combat modern malware and advanced threats wherever they are found.
“Understanding how systems are built and how they can fail is a type of thinking that is hardwired in me and constantly drives me to learn more.”
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