It can be seen that due to the growth of technology, online and offline identities have become intertwined. This is a result of individuals having an online personality that is different from their offline one. The internet is a vast world of varied identities and sometimes such represented identities may not coincide with what has been represented; this of course is a troubling aspect for identity theft, both in and out of the office setting.
For many companies, identity management is a very important factor when it comes to hiring and firing practices – ensuring identification checks. A further important aspect of identity management is ensuring the individual does not hold access to any data which could result as a breach for the company – but what exactly is identity management and why is it important?
What is identity management?
In a broad sense, identity management or ID management is an administrative task that deals with identifying individuals in a system and controlling their access to recourses within that system, but associating user rights and restrictions based on that established identity. Simplified, IT administrators define what users can and cannot do on the network with their credentials; mobility has grown to take account of more people not being in a centralized office setting, as well as the concept of bring your own device (BYOD).
ID management is used to increase the security and productivity of the workplace, whilst also helping to decrease cost and redundant effort. This is especially true as more and more workers are increasingly not in the same setting as the office they work for and many are using mobile devices or their own devices to work from. The Internet of Things has also seen a growth of importance when it comes to ID management; the concept of sensors and other devices being connected together. Resultantly, ID management has become an important security and of financial importance for many business.
Why is it important?
ID management is of course important in the scheme of making sure that your employees are able to access the information and data they need whilst ensuring that individuals do not have access rights who do not need it. This important factor is what allows an employee to gain access to documents when they are traveling whilst ensuring that a hacker does not have access to the information.
It can be seen that in the past, execution of ID management has been a difficult one thanks to the technology at the time and the complexities of putting this into place not only by administrators but understanding for their employees.
What can businesses do
As technology becomes increasingly easier to connect, there are now several ways in which IT administrators can make a seamless experience for all involved. Solutions are of course available for organizations to take advantage of and enabling them to manage their users’ identities among other things.
Access Manager for instance is a solution that operates as a virtual machine for the network. This solution also offers self-management of identities across multiple systems making it easy and convenient for all those involved. This adds into the ease of which IT administrators are able to manage their own accounts and for companies to reduce costs via the use of a virtual machine.
The end result is security and a platform that is easier to use which helps to maintain the identities of users who are currently involved in the organization versus those who are not.
This Blog was brought to you by Hypersocket Software and its CEO, Lee David Painter. With over 20 years of industry experience as a pioneer in IT Security, Lee developed the world’s first OpenSource browser-based SSL VPN (SSL-Explorer). Today, Lee runs Hypersocket Software, a leader in Password Self-Service solutions.
