In this blog, we’ll explore the essentials of IAM, including its key components, like authentication, authorization and single sign-on (SSO), along with its benefits, such as enhanced security and improved compliance. We’ll also share best practices for effective IAM implementation and discuss how IT Glue can fortify your cybersecurity measures. Dive into the details with us to understand why IAM plays a pivotal role in today’s digital ecosystem.

What is identity and access management (IAM)?

Identity and access management is a framework of business processes, policies and technologies that facilitates the management of electronic identities. By organizing user roles, data access permissions and the circumstances in which data or resources can be accessed, IAM systems ensure that the right individuals access the right resources at the right times for the right reasons.

Why is identity and access management important?

In today’s interconnected world, where data breaches are costly and damaging, IAM plays a pivotal role in protecting an organization’s digital assets. By ensuring that access is limited to authenticated and authorized users, IAM systems help prevent unauthorized access and potential security breaches.

Notably, the rise of phishing attacks and sophisticated models, like phishing-as-a-service, has prompted businesses to re-evaluate their cybersecurity strategies. Phishing, where attackers trick employees into giving up sensitive information, remains one of the most common and effective methods of cyberattacks. Identity and access management acts as a critical last line of defense against these threats, ensuring that even if credentials are compromised, the damage can be contained.

IAM is integral not just in defending against external threats but also in managing the internal complexities of corporate environments. As companies grow and adapt, they often find themselves managing an increasingly diverse set of users and devices accessing their systems. Here, IAM provides a structured way to manage identities, control access permissions and monitor activities across a wide range of scenarios.

Moreover, the significance of IAM extends beyond mere security. It is essential for ensuring regulatory compliance across various industries. Whether it’s the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) or any other regulatory requirement, IAM helps enforce the policies that keep businesses on the right side of the law while securing sensitive data against unauthorized access.

What are the key components of IAM?

Identity and access management comprises several fundamental components that work together to secure digital identities and manage access within an organization. Let’s break down these core components and their roles in an IAM framework.

Authentication

Authentication serves as the gateway to accessing any secure system. It verifies the identity of users attempting to gain access to an organization’s network or applications. This process requires users to present credentials, such as usernames and passwords, biometric data or security tokens. Modern IAM systems often employ multifactor authentication (MFA), which requires two or more verification factors, providing a higher level of security than simple password protection.

Authorization

Once authentication is confirmed, the next step is authorization, which determines the resources a user is permitted to access. This process involves assigning and enforcing permissions based on predefined policies that consider the user’s role within the organization. The authorization ensures that users have appropriate access levels to perform their job functions without exposing unnecessary data or functions that could be exploited if compromised.

Administration

Administration involves the management of user identities, roles, access rights and security policies. This component of IAM includes tasks such as creating new user accounts, modifying or deleting old ones, setting up and enforcing security policies, and managing permissions across diverse systems. Effective administration not only helps in streamlining operational processes but also in maintaining compliance with legal and regulatory standards.

Single sign-on (SSO)

Single sign-on (SSO) is a user authentication service that allows a user to use one set of login credentials (e.g., name and password) to access multiple applications. The service benefits users by simplifying the management of multiple usernames and passwords, and it benefits enterprises by lowering the cost of IT support services related to password recovery. SSO is particularly useful in environments where users are required to access multiple applications during their workflow.

Identity governance

Identity governance encompasses the policies and technologies needed to ensure the right people have the right access to technology resources. It includes the management of digital identity and user rights, where the identities are stored and the policies that determine how access is granted. Effective identity governance helps organizations meet compliance challenges, manage risk more effectively, reduce IT costs and improve user productivity and satisfaction by streamlining and automating IAM processes.

What are the benefits of IAM?

Implementing access and identity management systems brings numerous benefits to an organization, some of which are:

• Enhanced security: IAM provides a robust framework to protect against unauthorized access, identity theft and data breaches. By ensuring that access rights are appropriately managed, IAM helps in minimizing potential vulnerabilities within the system.
• Improved compliance: With IAM, organizations can enforce strong access controls and maintain detailed audit trails, which are essential for meeting compliance requirements in many regulated industries.
• Increased productivity: By streamlining access processes, IAM allows users to get their job done more efficiently while reducing the burden on IT staff by automating routine tasks such as password resets and account provisioning.
• Cost savings: Effective IAM security reduces the risk of IT incidents and their associated costs. By preventing data breaches and other security events, organizations can avoid losses and penalties associated with these incidents.

What are some IAM best practices?

Adopting best practices in identity and access management is essential for organizations seeking to enhance their security posture, improve operational efficiency and ensure regulatory compliance. Let’s explore some critical best practices that can make IAM implementations more effective.

Implementing strong authentication mechanisms

Strong authentication mechanisms are the cornerstone of effective IAM. Utilizing MFA bolsters security significantly. MFA requires users to provide two or more verification factors to gain access, which dramatically reduces the risk of unauthorized access due to compromised credentials. This can include something the user knows (password), something the user has (security token) and something the user is (biometric verification). Organizations should consider context-based authentication, which adjusts the required level of authentication based on the user’s location, time of access and other contextual factors.

Enforcing the principle of least privilege

The principle of least privilege (PoLP) involves restricting user access rights to only those necessary to perform their job. This minimizes the risk of accidental or malicious breaches from within the organization. Regular audits and reviews should be conducted to ensure that access rights are appropriate, with adjustments made as user roles change or as they leave the organization. Enforcing PoLP not only secures sensitive information but also helps control system configurations and operational complexities.

Regularly reviewing and updating access policies

In dynamic business environments, access requirements can change frequently as new roles are created and organizational goals evolve. Regular reviews and updates of access policies ensure that security measures are aligned with current business needs and compliance requirements. This includes updating permissions, removing redundant user accounts and adjusting roles to accommodate changes in the workforce or business processes.

Monitoring user activity

Continuous monitoring of user activity is vital to detect and respond to potential security incidents promptly. This includes tracking login attempts, access to sensitive data and changes to user permissions. Implementing automated alerts for unusual behavior, such as accessing systems at odd hours or downloading large volumes of data, can help identify potential security breaches early. Monitoring tools should be integrated with other security systems to provide comprehensive oversight and facilitate rapid response to incidents.

How IT Glue can help you with identity and access management

Implementing an efficient and secure identity and access management strategy is crucial for any organization looking to protect its digital assets and streamline its IT operations. IT Glue is a leading IT documentation platform that offers robust features that can not only enhance your IAM processes but also take your IT documentation to the next level. Here’s how IT Glue can support your organization in implementing an effective IAM framework:

• Streamlined documentation and centralized information: One of the fundamental ways IT Glue aids in IAM is through its comprehensive documentation capabilities. IT Glue provides a centralized repository for all IT documentation, which is essential for managing user identities and access controls. By having all critical information stored in one place, IT administrators can quickly and accurately manage user access settings, track changes and audit permissions. This centralization reduces errors and discrepancies in user data, which is crucial for effective identity management.
• Enhanced security with controlled access: Security is a prime concern in IAM, and IT Glue addresses this by offering controlled access to documentation. Access to sensitive information can be finely tuned to ensure that only authorized personnel have access to critical data. IT Glue allows for role-based access controls, ensuring that users only see what they need to see to perform their tasks. This not only tightens security but also supports the enforcement of the principle of least privilege — a best practice in IAM.
• Automated workflows to improve efficiency: Automation is the key to increasing efficiency in IAM processes. IT Glue automates routine IAM tasks, such as user provisioning and deprovisioning, password management and security policy enforcement. This automation reduces the administrative burden on IT staff, allowing them to focus on more strategic tasks while ensuring that IAM tasks are performed accurately and consistently. Automation also helps in maintaining compliance with security policies and regulations by enforcing consistent application across the board.
• Robust integration capabilities: IT Glue’s strength also lies in its ability to integrate seamlessly with other tools and platforms that organizations use for IAM, such as active directory services and single sign-on solutions. This integration capability ensures that changes in IT Glue are reflected across all systems, maintaining consistency and reducing the risk of security gaps. By integrating with a wide range of IAM-related tools, IT Glue helps create a unified security environment that is easier to manage and monitor.

By leveraging IT Glue, organizations benefit from efficient IT documentation, improved security, enhanced compliance, reduced IT overhead and increased operational efficiency. To explore how IT Glue can transform your IAM strategies and fortify your organization against cyberthreats, get a free demo today.

The post What Is Identity and Access Management (IAM)? appeared first on IT Glue.

That’s why we’re introducing the new 1-Click AD Password Rotation feature that lets you easily rotate on-prem Active Directory (AD) passwords directly from IT Glue. This feature offers several benefits like bulk-rotate and automatically syncs new passwords back in AD. Let’s look at this feature in greater detail. 

All your AD information in one pane

Having all your critical information in one place as a single source of truth helps you easily implement password best practices and meet compliance requirements. Consolidating all your AD information in one pane is possible with Network Glue — the automation engine that documents all of your managed and unmanaged devices, provides up-to-date network diagrams, and consolidates all cloud, hybrid and on-premises user information from Azure AD and AD.

With Network Glue, you get complete IT visibility in real time so all your assets are always documented. You can automatically document users, groups and passwords in one pane. It lets you bring in contextual Azure AD and AD user information — including status, last login, password expiries and the last password reset information — directly into IT Glue.

1-Click AD Password Rotation: Single on-demand rotation

With the new 1-Click Password Rotation feature, you can automatically rotate all on-premises AD passwords with a single click to reduce credential stealing and security risks. It makes life easy for your help desk technicians. When a user locks themselves out of their account or forgets their passwords, or wants to upgrade their password security, technicians can help them quickly and safely rotate their password in one click from IT Glue.

The best part is that once the passwords are changed in IT Glue, they are automatically updated in the AD, which leaves no room for human errors in the process. Technicians also don’t have to refer to multiple tools and can save time by automating all that manual work.

The 1-Click AD Password Rotation lets you view on-prem AD password details such as last rotated, status, updated date, and the network and organization the AD password belongs to.

1-Click AD Password Rotation: Centralized account management

You can now bulk-rotate on-demand Admin Service accounts with the 1-Click AD Password Rotation feature for greater security. It lets you rotate multiple passwords at once by selecting the administrator passwords you need to update on a regular basis.

This new feature saves valuable time and reduces mistakes while rotating passwords. You no longer have to do this manually one by one but can instead focus on more important tasks. The feature also shows you new AD passwords, which are not yet recorded in IT Glue, and lets you easily update them to minimize security vulnerabilities.

With the introduction of this new feature, you no longer need to purchase another tool just for password auto-rotation — it’s now available within your IT documentation solution.

Learn more about the new 1-Click AD Password Rotation feature in this Knowledge Base article. Discover why over 300,000 users trust IT Glue to save them time and increase their productivity with industry-leading, centralized and consolidated IT documentation.

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The post New Feature: 1-Click Active Directory Password Rotation to Keep Passwords Fresh and Data Safe appeared first on IT Glue.

In this blog, we’ll talk about the significance of Intune in today’s mobile-first world and how you can solve your problems related to data security and access management with the help of Intune.

What is Microsoft Intune?

Microsoft Intune is a cloud-based solution that helps organizations with enterprise mobility management. It enables both mobile device management (MDM) and mobile application management (MAM) and helps IT administrators control the mobile devices in their environment. This is especially helpful when you have business or personal mobile devices that deal with corporate data.

Intune belongs to the Enterprise Mobility + Security suite of Microsoft, and it is designed to integrate with various services of Microsoft to provide comprehensive mobile device management. For instance, you can integrate Microsoft Intune with Azure AD to control the users who have access to your data.

Intune vs. Azure

Azure is a cloud-based computing service offered by Microsoft. Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is an identity management service that leverages a cloud platform. When integrated with Intune, you can monitor data privileges in your network and determine who gets access to critical information. Additionally, features like single sign-on offered by Azure ensure security when managing user access.

When combined with Azure AD, Microsoft Intune can provide you with complete control over your organization’s devices and ensures seamless access for your team members. This allows your team to be productive from any device.

Intune vs. SCCM

The System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) was introduced by Microsoft in 1994 to manage various devices including servers, workstations and mobile devices. SSCM is still used by various organizations to manage their on-premises devices. It can come in handy during complicated application installations or when detailed reporting is required.

For modern IT infrastructure with cloud-based tools and mobile devices, Intune is a better choice. Intune also enables users to leverage conditional access policies to control access management. Intune and SSCM can be used together under a configuration called co-management. Here, both tools work in a complementary fashion to handle workloads in an IT infrastructure.

Intune vs. Endpoint Manager

Microsoft Endpoint Manager combines the features of Intune and SCCM in a single platform. It can be integrated with various Microsoft products and can effectively manage the Windows ecosystem. It can also be used to manage devices running other operating systems like Android, iOS and macOS.

This makes Endpoint Manager an ideal solution in today’s corporate world where devices are becoming more diverse and employees carry out various tasks using their mobile devices.

How do I get Microsoft Intune?

Microsoft Intune is a part of Microsoft Endpoint Manager. You can visit the admin center to access Intune and other settings related to device management. If you don’t already have an account, you can sign up for a 30-day free trial and check out Microsoft Intune in a test environment. Intune is supported by different operating systems including Windows, iOS, Android and macOS. If you are in a Windows ecosystem, you need at least Windows 10 to support Intune.

Once you have successfully signed up, you will have a new tenant, which is a dedicated instance of Azure AD for hosting your Intune subscription. Here, you can configure additional users and groups, and assign licenses based on their user privileges. Users can enroll their devices now and choose the apps required for their work. After setting up all the key details, you can configure various policies and begin the endpoint management process.

What is Intune used for?

The primary use of Intune is to remotely manage mobile devices and mobile applications in an organization. When you use Intune, your workforce can securely access organizational data and stay productive from anywhere. Since Intune is integrated with the Microsoft 365 suite of products, your users can securely deploy apps on all their devices to access data and networks.

Let’s check out the key functions of Microsoft Intune.

Mobile Device Management (MDM)

In Intune, you can use different approaches and set up protection policies to manage your mobile devices. You may also have different policies for company-owned devices and personal devices of your employees. With company-owned devices, you may have full control over various aspects including security, features and settings.

While full control may not be possible with personal devices, you can still enforce protection policies like multifactor authentication to secure organizational resources and apps.

Once your devices are enrolled in Intune, you can configure your policies to make sure they all meet your security standards. Most importantly, you can see the list of devices that can access your organizational resources and set or remove permissions as required.

Mobile Application Management (MAM)

This is used to secure your organizational data at the application level. By managing your applications through Intune, you can keep them up to date and configure settings to be enabled when an app starts. You can also add or remove your apps to the devices of specific users or groups.

When you use Intune along with Azure AD, you can create app protection policies to isolate your users’ personal data from organizational data while working on their personal devices. Intune also provides additional security to resources accessed with organizational credentials.

Device compliance management

To protect your organizational data, you can use Intune to set forth certain requirements to be met by devices and users in the infrastructure. These requirements are compliance policies. These policies outline various rules, and any non-compliance can alert the concerned personnel to safeguard data.

Detecting non-compliance is just one part of device compliance management in Intune. You can also incorporate various actions that can apply to devices that don’t meet your compliance regulations. For instance, you can send a warning to the user about the issue or even remotely lock the device or user account in case of serious violations.

Device security management

IT administrators can use the Endpoint Security node in Microsoft Intune to configure their security policies. These policies help you identify at-risk devices in your ecosystem and restore them to a more secure state. These policies can help you mitigate security risks in your IT infrastructure by:

• Reviewing the status of your devices
• Enforcing compliance policies for devices and users
• Establishing baseline best practices for device security
• Managing security configurations for various devices
• Integrating with Microsoft Defender to remediate security issues

What are the benefits of Intune?

The most important benefit of Microsoft Intune is that it ensures data security while allowing your team to be productive. It also comes with a lot of flexibility in terms of asset management as it allows administrators to set policies for enhancing security based on their unique requirements. Let’s check out some of the common reasons why businesses use Intune.

• Secure access to on-premises data: Even in this digital age, a lot of companies still use on-premises servers for a variety of reasons. With the help of Intune and a standard proxy server, you can provide your team with secure access to all their on-premises data.
• Control user access to critical data: By controlling user access to critical data, you can ensure better security management in your IT infrastructure.
• Transition to cloud services easily: For organizations looking to transition from on-premises to cloud, Intune is the best way to do it. With the cloud architecture, you can scale easily and have peace of mind due to the security offered here.
• Have centralized control over your IT: With Intune, you can manage your entire IT environment from a single console. This helps you have better control over the security of your devices and applications.
• Gain more value from Office 365 solutions: When you already have Office 365 solutions in your IT environment, you can benefit a lot from Intune. In addition to protecting your corporate data in multiple apps, you can also provide a secure browsing environment for your team with an Intune Managed Browser app.
• Flexible licensing policy: Microsoft offers a flexible way to acquire Intune for your IT environment. You can get it as a part of the Enterprise Mobile Suite without worrying about per-user or per-device costs.

What can Intune not do?

Despite its multitude of benefits, Microsoft Intune is not without its share of limitations. Some of them are as follows:

• With Intune, you will be missing the following information about your IT environments: Inventory, what they own, how many laptops, desktops, software, etc.
• Intune will not provide any support or troubleshooting for native mail apps or third-party apps such as Gmail.
• The initial configuration is complicated here. During the deployment stage, you have to do quite a bit of discovery by asking your clients a lot of questions about their IT environments.

How can IT Glue help?

IT Glue is an award-winning documentation solution that comes packed with powerful features. With our latest update, you can now automate Intune asset and Azure users’ information into IT Glue.

IT Glue’s integration with Microsoft Intune helps you automate asset management. You can now have a full inventory of all your assets, who has your assets, where your assets are, etc., all in one pane, alongside passwords that you need to log on and how-to guides to give you step-by-step instructions on how to troubleshoot.

To learn more about how you can make the most out of IT Glue and Intune, request a demo.

Get your demo today!

The post Microsoft Intune: Overcome Security and Access Management Challenges in Mobile Assets appeared first on IT Glue.

Demand

In our last blog post, we talked about how people are moving towards cloud-based applications, and how this move has created a proliferation of passwords. IDaaS helps solve a lot of problems related to password hygiene, but removing the need for people to remember dozens of passwords. Furthermore, people want access to their apps across a range of devices, which makes authentication that much trickier. Because IDaaS makes life easier for the end user, it is becoming a service increasingly in demand.

Security

IDaaS eliminates some of the issues with using passwords to authenticate. When combined with multi-factor authentication, IDaaS offers an alternative to reliance on passwords that is not only more secure, but is better for the end user as well. IDaaS + MFA eliminates the one-password hack AND the poor password hygiene that leads to the one-password hack.

Productivity & Stickiness

One of the biggest trends in the MSP business right is to transition from companies seeing IT as a cost center to them seeing IT as a profit center. If you can offer your customers something that makes them more productive, you are helping them increase their profitability. MSPs are evolving into more of a trusted IT advisor, or even a CIO type of role, entering into strategic partnership with their clients. This allows for the MSP to transform from being a company that is replaceable, to one that is irreplaceable, adding significant and unique value to the service you provide.

Revenue

Obviously you have the ability to set your pricing structure in a way that allows you to capture additional revenue for each thing that you provide to your client. But the revenue side is more than just that; when you make your service stickier, you reduce churn and that allows you to grow more quickly. If that’s not enough, you also will have happier clients who can become evangelists, providing you with powerful ammunition for your marketing efforts.

IDaaS is by no means the only pathway to achieving this end goal. But the high demand for IDaaS functionality makes it one of the better opportunities in the space and a good starting point for building in addition revenue and productivity-enhancing service. To find out more about how to build revenue and improve your business profitability, drop us a line:

Yes, sign me up for a demo!

IT Glue is an information management platform that allows for efficient storage and retrieval of all the documentation you need to help your MSP run better. By integrating PSA and RMM data, we can help increase your efficiency, and reduce onboarding times by even more. By eliminating wasted time from your business, IT Glue gives you more time to focus on what matters – growing your business.

The post Why Focus on IDaaS? appeared first on IT Glue.

What is IDaaS?

One of the emerging opportunities, where MSPs stand to gain a lot, is identity-as-a-service (IDaaS). We know that human beings are the biggest source of security risk – they click on things, set easy passwords, write their passwords down and all sorts of other silly things. But as concerns about cybercrime grow, and as small businesses increasingly turn to their MSPs for solutions, IDaaS has emerged as a set of solutions to allow the MSP to manage passwords and identities for their customers.

The Components of IDaaS

At the heart of these tools is single sign-on (SSO), which is the federation of passwords. The end user uses a single sign-on for all different applications – much easier when these applications are cloud-based. Thus, SSO puts the MSP in control of user access to all the apps that the user works with.

The second component to IDaaS is provisioning and deprovisioning. The ease with which the MSP can provide access to a suite of apps – and more importantly the ease with which the MSP can remove this access – is critical to the IDaaS opportunity because it increases the speed at which accounts can be locked down if there is a problem.

Why Your Customers Benefit

For a small business concerned with cybercrime, IDaaS does two things. It reduces the risk associated with password sprawl and poor password handling practices. And it increases the pace at which a compromised user account can be shut down. Given that one-third of cyberattacks target small business, and that the average cost of these attacks to small business is $40,000 per attack, the value of IDaaS for the MSP serving small business clients is just a matter of math. Preventing just one attack is worth so much more than what your customers would pay for IDaaS. So you, the MSP, gets an additional revenue stream, and your clients get greater security.

Why the MSP Benefits

So now you understand the value proposition, just how big is this opportunity anyway? A recent report by Gartner estimates that IDaaS will move from 20% of the market for identity services today to 40% by 2020. The total market size for IDaaS is estimated to be in the range of $1 billion for 2017, and while SAML providers are going to account for a sizeable chunk of that, they are really the behind-the-scenes tools for IDaaS, whereas MSPs are the client-facing side of the opportunity. And in an increasingly competitive marketplace for managed services, providing this additional service can be a point of differentiation from which you draw competitive advantage.

To find out more about how IT Glue can help you take advantage of the IDaaS opportunity, click the link below:

Sign me up for a demo!

IT Glue is the leading documentation platform for MSPs, designed to eliminate waste, improve productivity and hit your SLAs better. We are SOC 2 compliant, meaning that you can count on the security of your information in IT Glue.

The post What is IDaaS and Why is it the Next Big Thing? appeared first on IT Glue.

So what is IDaaS? And why is it such a big opportunity for MSPs? If you want to whet your appetite with a basic overview before the webinar, you can learn about IDaaS here.

Join Luis Giraldo, IT Glue’s VP of Product, for a new webinar about all things IDaaS. This webinar has never been seen before, and there aren’t a lot of companies talking about this, so you’ll never have a better opportunity to gain first mover advantage in an emerging and rapidly-growing specialization.

Watch webinar recording here.

About Luis Giraldo

Luis started his own MSP, Ook Enterprises, and built it out to be a $1.2 million business, with just two employees. Challenged with documenting his clients’ information systematically and transparently, Luis also developed a SaaS app called Monkey Box. In 2017, Monkey Box was acquired by IT Glue, and Luis was named IT Glue’s VP, Product, taking on the responsibility of growing and improving the world’s best documentation platform.

The post Webinar: The IDaaS Evolution – an Emerging Growth Story for MSPs appeared first on IT Glue.