Identity and Access Management (IAM), which is commonly known as identity management forms part of the IT department within an organisation.
The concept of identity management follows a framework of internal business processes, policies and technologies that helps businesses manage the digital identities of user’s accounts and corporate network resources.
Essentially, identity management plays a vital role in helping you understand who has access to what, where they are accessing it from and how they are accessing various applications and resources available to them. This helps limit the security exposure of a data breach as well as limit the damage of a data breach.
Preventing and minimising a data breach is, however, not the only benefit of identity management. There a number of other useful ways in which an identity management program can benefit an organisation.
Below we highlight some of the other main benefits of digital identity management.
1. Easy access anywhere
In today’s connected world, people need access to various services and resources from different locations.
With offices spread across the globe and the rise of remote work, businesses need to provide flexible but secure access to the tools and resources employees need to succeed.
Identity management helps eliminate these barriers allowing employees to enter applications or resources anytime, anywhere.
2. Connect different parts of your organisation
More and more organisations are jumping on board the digital transformation train, this means adopting digital processes and technologies that help improve efficiency and communication within an organisation.
This results in a greater demand for employees to be connected to their applications and devices. Unfortunately, these added digital processes and technologies bring with them greater exposure to security threats.
Thankfully, authentication and security are two of the best strengths associated with a well throughout and implemented identity management solution. Ensuring an organisation has visibility of who has access to what will significantly decrease the risk exposure taken from new digital transformation initiatives.
Organisations should embrace being digitally connected as this will help them to grow and maintain their competitive advantage.
3. Improve productivity
Identity management can also improve an organisation’s productivity.
A well-implemented solution is able to automate the joiner-mover leaving process, re-assigning access to systems and resources from old employees to new employees.
By automating the entry of new personal, an identity management solution reduces the delivery time for those users to gain access to the applications and resources they need to ensure they start being productive immediately.
4. Optimise user experiences
Remembering usernames and passwords to access your organisation’s key applications, networks, and other services has become a challenge within businesses.
An identity management program can improve the user experience for internal users such as employees and external users such as contractors and suppliers.
Using features such as Single Sign-on (SSO) and password management, allows an organisation’s variety of users to access different internal and external applications by using the same access method.
This helps decrease the IT backlogs associated with managing user access and the downtime of users that can’t remember their usernames and passwords and improves the overall user experience in an organisation.
5. Secure your brand at all levels
Identity management minimises the risk and effect of a data breach, regardless of the security domain in which that access was granted. This is achieved through strong authentication processes that are implemented through identity management programs.
Aurther increase in security is achieved by conducting a detailed verification of all identities entering the system. Awell-implemented identity management program helps provide an agile, high-security posture that will add value to all the organisation’s stakeholders.
Implementing an identity management program comes with a number of benefits.
It will help improve and increase the security of your organisation, improve the user experience for both external and internal users and ensure that access is granted to those who need it, when they need it. The overall result is improved productivity and less downtime for IT staff tasked with managing access requests and issues.
Are you looking for a robust security system that doesn’t compromise the user experience? Why not download our eBook to help you