You might have heard the term “identity management” in IT circles. Identity management involves proving that someone is who they claim to be.
That person might be a worker who’s trying to log onto your computer network, or it might pertain to someone else, like a vendor or client.
Identity management matters to businesses. You might not be sure why, though. We’ll talk about that in detail right now.
What Precisely is Identity Management?
Apart from what we already mentioned, identity management matters for businesses because hackers can utilize falsified identities to access your company’s resources. Stolen credentials are worth a lot because a hacker who knows what to do with them can walk away with your trade secrets. They might sell your sensitive worker information to the highest bidder as well.
You utilize identity management to permit your employees to use your IT resources. Identity management is half of what IT professionals call IAM. This stands for identity and access management.
This concept involves who’s using your resources but also which ones they’re trying to access. We’ll focus on just user identity in this article, though.
Identity Management Improves Overall Company Security
Your company probably wants to stay as secure as possible. Whoever is in charge likely understands that if your safeguards lapse, hackers can break into your network. Data breaches mean lost customer confidence, which can sink a company very quickly. Some businesses go under because of data breaches.
If you have robust identity management policies or tools in place, that can help you mitigate any active security risks. If a policy violation happens, you can quickly pinpoint it and see whether it was a malicious attack or just employee carelessness.
Identity management lets you remove any inappropriate access privileges, such as if you fire someone for cause and you no longer want them to use your resources. You can also point to your identity management protocols if you need to meet any regulatory requirements that exist.
Lower IT Costs
It’s also undeniable that if you have excellent identity management features as part of your company’s protocols, that will ultimately lower your IT costs. If you use modern identity services, you no longer need to keep such a close eye on local identities for any external uses. At this moment, when remote work is more popular than ever, that certainly comes in handy.
Application administration is easier with a strong identity management system in place. You can go with a cloud-based identity management system, which means you won’t have to purchase and maintain any on-premises equipment.
Your Workers Can Be More Productive
Identity management also helps worker productivity. The right identity management system can automate and centralize the access management lifecycle. Role transition and new employee hiring become much more streamlined and don’t take nearly as much time or effort.
Improved identity processing time frees up workers to focus on other tasks. In particular, better identity management features for your business do many chores your human resources department would otherwise have to handle.
Better identity management means fewer errors.
If something ever goes wrong within your network, you can figure out what happened much faster, as well as who caused the issue. You can then either tactfully correct the action or shut out anyone unauthorized.
Usage Ease
Better identity management is also easier for your workers to learn how to use. As new ways to determine identity have hit the mainstream, many businesses can report record productivity and more satisfied employees.
With better and simpler identity management features for either in-person or remote workers, both signup and sign-in are faster and more precise. System admins can take better care of apps and websites. End-users will enjoy your products more. The usage ease from better identity management promotes satisfaction for anyone involved who uses your company’s website, app, products, or services.
Easy Information Sharing
If your workers can also tell who’s talking to them and sharing things with them, they will know to trust them. For instance, if someone logs into your network the right way, they will have an assigned identity that other workers can see. They will know that it’s okay to open an email or look at a direct message from a coworker.
Identity management provides a common starting point for all workers when they begin their workday.
If you set up the same identity-based security protocols across all the devices and operating platforms you use, your workers should appreciate that.
You can set up validation, privileges, and authorization based on someone’s position within the company. Say you know that you’re dealing with someone who’s new or low down in the company pecking order. You can set up the system so they need to ask a more authorized person if they want to look at certain restricted company files or data.
Knowing someone’s identity when they try to interact with you can only be a positive thing for any company or business entity.
So many companies have an exclusively online presence these days. Since someone might want to talk to you or buy from you without actually walking up to the counter and meeting you face-to-face, it’s best to have advanced identity management features.
You can use them for your workers, but also any vendors or individuals with only a minor company affiliation. You might choose to assign any worker or vendor a username to access your system, but then you can instruct them to change their password frequently if you feel like there’s any danger from hackers or other malicious individuals.
You might assign each worker and vendor a new password that you come up with yourself every week or so. A random password generator makes it less likely a security breach will occur, and that can be a critical part of identity management.
Don’t neglect this part of your business if you want to avoid security issues. Identity management is something that’s crucial for every company rather than optional.
