The sheer pace at which digital identities are being created to manage an increasing amount of computing resources both on-premises and in the cloud environments- make identity-first security of paramount importance. Several catastrophic IT incidents happen when the security fabric for distributed digital identities lack identity-centric controls. 

While organizations deploy IAM and IGA controls to secure identity, the conventional (IAM, IGA) methods are inadequate as they provide only static control. On the other hand, the essence of identity-first security is continuous monitoring and context-wise controls- the first step towards successfully implementing the zero-trust strategy. 

The context that necessitates implementation of identity-first security

1. Remote workforce: Since the onset of “Work-From-Anywhere” (WFA) norm in the post-pandemic era, the number of remote users is increasing. The remote users’ access to numerous services means that identities have control over both business assets and critical information and in many cases, access to infrastructure assets. So, in this scenario, perimeter-based security is of little importance as identities are dispersed across distributed environments. Every digital identity has become a perimeter which must be secured, controlled, and monitored, which conventional IAM and IGA control do not provide.

2. Proliferation of SaaS applications: SaaS-delivered applications are gaining popularity worldwide due to their scalability, flexibility, cost-effectiveness, simplicity of deployments and convenience of usage. Applications across different functional areas are increasingly deployed by organizations of all shapes and sizes. Therin lies a problem from identity security perspective. On most occasions, it is the business team, HR teams, sales team, marketing team among many other functions that keep on adding SaaS applications, circumventing IAM teams. As a result, there are no role-based and policy-based controls. Many privileged level activities are carried out without the least privileged principle and other necessary identity-centric safeguards.

3. Human and non-human identity sprawls across multi-cloud environments: A rapid adoption of multi-cloud platforms among global enterprises has resulted in emerging IAM use cases that require relook at how cloud privileges and cloud infrastructure entitlements are managed. Today, more than 70% of organizations adopt multi-cloud platforms to meet the IT operational requirements and infrastructure use cases through various cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure and GCP (Google Cloud Platform) among many others. It is not just the human identities that need to be protected but also machine identities/non-human identities for cloud workloads such as scripts, containers, VMs, CI/CD tools, RPA tools require continuous monitoring and governance. 

4. Limitations in conventional IAM approaches: The modern-day IAM use cases are dynamic and require variable controls to navigate through high-velocity workloads. Conventional IAM tools, although providing role-based access control (RBAC) and attributes-based access control (ABAC), were never designed to address decentralized and dynamic use cases. In other words, conventional IAM tools offer only static access control and governance that increases identity-based threats. Likewise, conventional IAM methods provide preventive security measures such as MFA, fine-grained access control, and session monitoring. On the other hand, to enhance the identity-first security framework security pros require non-static- continuous monitoring and context-based authentication of digital identities as well as centralized engine to manage identities. 

How to design an identity-first security posture? 

The basic requirements for construction of identity-first security posture are to adopt access control mechanisms that offers the following: 

• Implementing continuous identity threat analytics and orchestration 
• Ensuring regular certification and recertification of digital identities 
• Establishing centralized control to control, manage and monitor all sorts of identities- converged identity approach 
• Verifying the trust of an identity using context-based authentication 
• Enforcing just-in-time access to systems 

How does ARCON enable organizations to build an identity-first security posture?

• Adaptive authentication: In addition to supporting MFA, ARCON product suites such as Converged Identity platform and Privileged Access Management leverage adaptive authentication for building an identity-first security posture. Deny access until one can establish trust is what makes adaptive authentication a very secure way to access business critical applications. ARCON has a high level of maturity when it comes to assessing the trust as one can configure various tests to be performed before the trust can be established using adaptive authentication components such as IP address, Mac address, geo-location, secret key authentication and time factor. 

• User behaviour analytics: Predicting risk stemming from digital identity is as important as administering it. User behaviour analytics enables security professionals to identify identities that deviate from baseline activities as mandated by management. ARCON provides powerful identity threat analytics engine- the Knight Analytics that leverages the neural and deep learning technologies to identify any sort of deviation and sends alert to highlight anomalies in near real-time basis. . 

• Unified engine (Converged Identity approach) to manage various digital identities: Modern-day organizations find it increasingly difficult to manage various kinds of identities in today’s vast and distributed IT infrastructure. A unified engine to manage and govern all sorts of identities– human, non-human, shared, privileged identities-is an absolute must for mitigating administrative hassles and chaos resulting from fragmented and siloed IAM approach that erodes the importance of identity-first security approach. 

• Just-in-time access: Identity-based threats intensify if there is no mechanism to ensure the right identity has the right to access the right systems at the right time. Just-in-time access approaches eliminate always-on/standing privileges and enforces the principle of least privilege. ARCON provides all industry-standard JIT approaches such as creation of on-demand privileged accounts, time-based privileged elevation, temporary elevation, ephemeral credentials (access tokens for cloud resources). 

• Identity governance: Robust identity governance (IG) is getting increasingly important in complex IT environments and one of the critical components to build an identity-first security posture. A widely distributed IT environment includes users, assets, and services that have increased significantly, and these IT components are distributed in multiple cloud platforms and hybrid data center setups. ARCON Identity Governance module enables organizations to manage a complex range of access rights for users, user groups, services, assets, and asset groups – both on-prem and on-cloud. In both environments, ARCON Identity Governance works as a key towards managing the workflow, provisioning/deprovisioning identities, revoking rights and certificate management including recertification. 

Conclusion

The foundation of a robust cybersecurity framework is built by implementing an Identity-first security approach. To manage identity-centric controls in on-prem or on-cloud environments, organizations count on an Identity-first security approach, that ensures context-wise controls and continuous monitoring of the identities, especially for distributed digital identities.

The security and confidentiality of business information not just depends on who all have access to that information, but also – 

• How do organizations store business-critical information?
• Where do organizations store this information?
• With whom are employees sharing the information?

There was a time when organizations used to manage a huge pile of hard copies consisting of confidential information in secret drawers or iron lockers. To maintain confidentiality, these drawers used to remain locked always with keys kept in some fixed places with the knowledge of very limited people. 

Nevertheless, amid the increased pace of digitalization, that’s not feasible anymore. Business data is generated in huge volumes and scattered across the functional teams that manage the data. 

Indeed, usage of physical data has dropped drastically, and digital data (usage of soft copies) has skyrocketed. However, there have been loopholes with the practice of maintaining confidentiality, and thus, data security and data privacy concerns have increased. IT incidents such as data breaches, cyber espionage and data abuse/ misuse are rampant because of lack of adequate attention towards information security.

Today, there is an enormous amount of critical data and business secrets generated every day and organizations require a secure repository to store all such information. To address a growing number of use cases that can compromise critical business information, ARCON has developed My Vault to protect important files, folders, drives, secrets, keys, certificates etc.  

Use Case 1: Shared Information

Let us think of a situation where any user shares some confidential information with some other user and the recipient reshares the information with someone else. In a large IT environment, where huge volumes (in TBs) of data are generated (or transferred) every day, it is never possible for the IT administrators and the risk management team to monitor which file is accessed and shared.

Users either share files/ folders through email attachments or by sharing drives of the folders. They allow permissions to view the files, download the files or sometimes even edit the files as per requirements. Situations worsen if the receivers share those files again with someone else in the organization or anyone outside the organization.

This way, within a span of few days, there could be a possibility that the information gets shared randomly among multiple people both internally and with third parties. Some could save it in their drives, some could save in the USBs, some could even take a print of it. Eventually, the information no longer remains “confidential”, and the data privacy is misused.

ARCON’s My Vault offers a centralized repository to store, access and share critical business secrets in a secure manner. The files where this information is stored remain encrypted and can be deleted easily after a preset time to avoid any unauthorized access. It also controls the end-users’ activities based on the pre-configured permissions even at a granular level. ARCON My Vault can give certain privileges with regards to download, share, transfer of files/folders or access permissions that minimizes risks of data misuse.

Use Case 2: Packages

It is not just always files/ folders that require sharing, but also business secrets, keys, certificates or even new build of software are shared internally with multiple users to sync with the new patches. The users face challenges in maintaining security during such transfers. Any file/ folder, secrets, certificates or keys once shared with anyone in the organization, could be downloaded unlimited times, which is again a risky affair. Even if it is done in a secure enterprise network, we can confirm that downloaded files bear more risks of misuse compared to that of “read-only” or “view-only” files.

With ARCON My Vault packages, users can upload the files/ folders, secrets, keys, certificates or patches on My Vault and share those in an encrypted format with the recipients. My Vault implements restrictions also in the number of downloads to all these shared data. E.g., if the recipient downloads the file once after receiving it, he or she won’t be allowed any further downloads in the near future, unless the sender re-shares it. In addition, with the help of My Vault packages, the sender can apply a rule where the recipient will be restricted from sharing the file with anyone else without the permission of the sender.

Use Case 3: Downtime ARCON Password Envelope Management (APEM) Tool

Robust data backup mechanism is a crucial component of data storage. It has been witnessed quite frequently among organizations that inspite of vaulting their business secrets in an encrypted manner, they lack any convenient mechanism to have a data backup. What could happen if there is any unprecedented incident (majorly downtime) with the vault or storage system? The organization could be at grave risk of losing their information assets. 

ARCON Password Envelope Management (APEM) is a robust data backup mechanism tool that does not allow any stored information to be misused even if ARCON My Vault stops working. While analyzing and sharing confidential data assets and business secrets with My Vault, organizations can opt for APEM tool. During unexpected scenarios when My Vault is not working, then also the IT administrator can ensure that every data in the storage remains encrypted. The administrator can select a certain number of users through whom all the files are emailed in their inboxes in an encrypted manner. For further assurance of data security, those data files can be decrypted only through APEM tool after permission from the IT administrator. This eventually keeps every file and folder safe till My Vault services resume.

Use Case 4: Reports

If IT administrators do not have any record of the amount of data flow happening in an enterprise network, it could be catastrophic because they won’t be able to track who has accessed what data at what time and for what purpose. It could be risky from audit perspective as well because most of the regulatory compliances demand adequate safeguards to monitor data.

ARCON My Vault’s automated reporting tool keeps track of all the vault operations date-wise, timewise and user-wise. It highlights each action in the form of reports whether it is access or sharing of confidential files/ folders, keys, certificates etc. done by individual users in the enterprise network.

Use Case 5: Secure Data Sharing in Different Domain

In different departments of business development, it is a widespread practice to share business brochures, proposals or other Confidentials with their clients, prospects, and partners. Occasionally, the email domain restricts file sharing with different domains for security reasons. At this point, even if we remove the restriction and share the file, we still cannot be assured whether the file shared will not be re-shared with any other third-party user or how many times it is going to be downloaded.

After implementing ARCON My Vault, organizations can ensure secure and restrictive file sharing even with different email domains. Once the file is shared from My Vault, the users can put restrictions on –

• How many times can the receiver download the file?
• For how many days can the receiver find the file in his email inbox?
• Whether the receiver will be permitted to re-share the file with anyone else.

Hence, chances of data misuse/ abuse are minimized to a large extent.

Conclusion

ARCON| My Vault is an essential information security solution in modern enterprise use cases. It offers a centralized repository to protect, store and share confidential business information and secrets in a secure manner.

Digital transformation is ubiquitous. Fundamentally, it has changed the IT paradigm.  In terms of security as well. Digital transformation demands carefully architected identity management practice, which is composed of people, policies and procedures. Indeed, these identities have taken the center stage of this transformation. Identities constantly interact with applications, secrets, information of critical importance and network and infrastructure devices. So, if organizations lack the ability to manage and control the way these identities make access to critical applications, the digitalization initiatives might fail. 

To make this transformation successful, organizations must build a detailed activity map and permission policies around every identity in the backend that can perform all granted entitlements and services in the IT environment- securely. Such a map in the backend forms the “Identity Fabric” that ensures all the digital services are done in a standardized manner. It works as the first brick to build the legacy building of Identity Access Management (IAM). 

If we go by the allegorical terms, an identity is the distinctive or identical qualities, beliefs, or personality traits that develop or establish a standard for a person. On the contrary, digital identities in cyber terms are information used by IT systems to represent a person, machine, application, or organization itself. And building Identity Fabric enables us to seamlessly manage user and service identities (either human or non-human) in multiple layers of IT infrastructure. 

Identity Fabric and Access Management

Digital identities are increasingly vulnerable to insider and third-party threats. And the sheer number of identities is ever greater. There are human identities, privileged identities, machine identities, API identities, and cloud identities in modern IT infrastructure. The identity fabric for every set of categories, use cases, and functions demands a distinct set of rules and policies for seamless and secure functions. If the security and governance of the identities are not as per the standards and policies, it could be connived by malicious insiders, compromised third-parties or organized hacktivists.

Therefore, a well-managed identity fabric provides visibility into the system and works as a key component to build authentication mechanisms regardless of IT infrastructure.

Policy-based access for every identity: Specified access policy is always crucial for identifying the genuineness of any digital identity. Access to any critical application, confidential database server, or the individual who has predefined roles and responsibilities in place determines the comprehensiveness of identity fabric. It is not how many accesses a particular identity must fulfill the requirements, but the genuineness and relevant access right that matters.

Hence, the access policy, once predefined, determines whether the identity is rightly used or misused. In a larger perspective, it prevents information misuse.

Authorization of Identities: The lifecycle of an identity depends on how the identity is established and used for different sets of IT tasks. And to do that, authorization of the identities plays a key role. It is the first critical step for mapping the overall identity fabric. Authorization mechanism ensures that the identity is –

• Accessing the right application/ system at the right time for the right purpose
• Preventing any unauthorized attempt to access any critical application
• Maintaining confidentiality of business data
• Seamlessly integrating the resources in a secure manner
• Meeting regulatory compliance mandates

Components that help to choose the right Identity Fabric

An API-based approach (Application Programming Interface) is the key behind an intense architecture of identity fabric. This is because the services related to identity need to be incorporated with the digital activities of the organization consistently. Once the process is standardized, identity fabric helps to accelerate the integration of modern technologies to a smoother user experience and stronger security posture with privacy controls. It builds the compliance posture.

Here are the components that help to choose the relevant Identity Fabric:

• Convergence: Identity Fabrics build a comprehensive approach towards the major functional areas of Identity Access Management (IAM). This niche segment of data management is integrated to ensure that the right users have the right access to the right technology resources.
• Flexibility: This is a default trait of Identity Fabrics. Considering the advanced IT infrastructure, most organizations seek flexible deployment models, and the right identity fabric offers flexibility with a comprehensive set of APIs.
• Supported identities and systems: The scope of an Identity Fabric lies beyond the workforce. Considering the proliferation of hybrid workforce, it covers all types of identities, remote users and third-party access. 

Role of Digital Identity Fabrics in building business strategies

The key aspects of identity fabrics in the digital age are security, privacy, compliance and user experience. Business leaders are continuously challenged by the need for technological innovations and new business models because there are frequent changes in business partnerships, and internal policies. Digital Identities take the centerstage of this transformation. Without the ability to manage and control the access of every identity to every service, businesses will face transformational challenges. To be precise, the IT challenges on businesses related to digital identities come from multiple areas including demand of –

• Compliance standards
• Data privacy from consumers 
• Smart analytics of activities
• Flexibility of the functions and access patterns
• Ability to customize requirements as per demands

Conclusion

Digital transformation is inevitable, and the challenges related to this transformation are unavoidable. Choosing the right identity fabric helps to build the foundation of secure IT infrastructure without compromising the daily IT operational tasks and overall business continuity.

Introduction

The digital world has ushered in an era of unprecedented connectivity, convenience, and innovation. However, it has also created an ever-evolving landscape of cybersecurity threats. As more devices, applications, and services become intertwined, a robust, unified approach to identity management becomes paramount. Converged identity is one such solution, poised to revolutionize the way we approach cybersecurity.

This blog post will delve into the concept of converged identity and discuss how it will change the cybersecurity landscape in the coming years.

What is Converged Identity?

Converged identity is an approach to identity and access management (IAM) that unifies the leadership of both physical and digital identities into a single, comprehensive system. It encompasses the user’s credentials, devices, applications, and services across various platforms and environments, providing a seamless and secure experience. By consolidating and streamlining IAM, converged identity solutions offer improved security, efficiency, and user experience.

How Converged Identity will change the future landscape of Cybersecurity

• Enhanced Security

Traditional IAM systems often involve disjointed processes and multiple siloed solutions, leading to security vulnerabilities and inconsistencies. Converged identity addresses these issues by providing a unified platform consolidating various authentication methods, including biometrics, passwords, and tokens. This holistic approach ensures a higher level of security, reducing the risk of unauthorized access and data breaches.

• Simplified Management

As organizations embrace digital transformation, the number of devices, applications, and services requiring access management grows exponentially. However, managing these disparate systems can be complex and time-consuming. Converged identity simplifies this process by offering a single, centralized platform for managing access rights and permissions. This streamlines administration tasks and allows IT teams to focus on more strategic initiatives.

• Improved User Experience

For users, navigating multiple authentication systems can be confusing and cumbersome. Converged identity offers a more seamless experience, enabling users to access various systems and services with a single set of credentials. This simplification improves user satisfaction and encourages the adoption of security best practices, such as regularly updating passwords and using multi-factor authentication.

• Scalability and Flexibility

As businesses grow and evolve, their cybersecurity needs may change. Converged identity solutions provide the scalability and flexibility needed to adapt to these changes. By offering a modular and customizable approach, organizations can quickly expand their IAM capabilities or integrate new technologies as required.

• Compliance and Regulation

With increasing regulatory requirements, such as GDPR and CCPA, organizations must ensure that their IAM systems comply with relevant legislation. Converged identity solutions can help organizations meet these requirements by providing an auditable and transparent platform for managing user access and permissions.

Conclusion

The need for robust, unified IAM solutions becomes more apparent as the digital landscape expands. Converged identity offers a promising approach to addressing the challenges of modern cybersecurity. By unifying physical and digital identities, enhancing security, simplifying management, and improving user experience, converged identity solutions are poised to revolutionize the future of cybersecurity. As a result, organizations adopting this technology will be better equipped to navigate the ever-evolving digital age threats, safeguarding their assets and ensuring their long-term success.

In March 2023, the US Government released the highly anticipated National Cybersecurity Strategy (NCS) report. This report requires that government organizations and private companies build robust cyber defense strategies amid the rising cyber threats. This NCS comprises of five key pillars to make the digital ecosystem more defensive, effective, and resilient. The five pillars are:

• Defend critical infrastructure
• Disrupt and dismantle threat actors
• Shape market forces to drive security and resilience
• Invest in a resilient future
• Forge international partnerships to pursue shared goals

The NCS expects government and private organizations to put concerted and voluntary efforts for a strong defense against emerging cyber threats. Besides, the NCS demands relevant and adequate usage of IT security tools in a coordinated manner that can protect national data and ensure economic prosperity.

Some Examples where Vulnerable Critical Infrastructure was targeted

• In the middle of 2020, the ICS (Industrial Control Systems) command for water systems of a Middle East-based nation was compromised and the control systems for the pumping stations were attacked. It resulted in disruption of water supply and sewage services for indefinite periods.
• In the same year one of the largest telecom service providers faced a data breach incident that compromised the record of more than 600 corporate clients. The victim hosted the data in hybrid environment. A security vulnerability in the operations server allowed the breach to happen in the company’s information management server.
• Again, in the same year, a government organization from the Asia Pacific region suffered an IT incident due to unauthorized third-party access. Security breach of an online application system resulted in data compromise of 26000 customers.
• In the beginning of 2018, a Parliament in Western Europe was hit by a brute force attack disrupting the email service. An external source tried to gain access to mailboxes of assembly members forcing affected users to change passwords.
• In 2019, personal information of 92 million citizens was breached from the government database in South America and was put up for sale on the dark web.

We could assess how disastrous cyber-attacks can be on critical infrastructure, if the potential damage inflicted by these threat actors are ignored. 

Who are the threat actors?

• Malicious Insiders – who possess access rights to confidential business information
• Third-Party – the external users who access the organization’s systems and applications for maintenance, storage and other regular activities 
• Nation States – the rogue nations who always try to destabilize democratically elected governments by stealing information or spying on their infrastructure of national interest
• Organized Cybercriminals – who harm organizations by stealing/encrypting/or compromising government and private organizations’ confidential data for financial gains

How does Identity and Access Management (IAM) help in building a resilient IT security posture?

In the NCS report, the US government has specifically emphasized reinforcing identity-first security. The report states that, “Enhanced digital identity solutions and infrastructure can enable a more innovative, equitable, safe and efficient digital economy.”

Quite rightly said. Amid the acceleration of digital interaction, more and more organizations host their data in distributed data center environments, multi-cloud environments, managed service environments and hybrid environments. Thousands of human and digital (non-human) identities are being created that constantly interact with mission-critical applications, business and IT (Information Technology) infrastructure assets. These identities, if not provisioned, de-provisioned (on time), monitored, controlled and governed based on the user roles, there are very high chances of breaches and identity abuse from compromised individuals (insiders), including third parties.

In such a scenario, it is highly imperative to ensure that the right user is accessing the right resources at the right time for the right purpose. It not just secures the enterprise resources from unauthorized access but also strengthens the compliance framework.  Identity and access management (IAM) provide the foundation for a robust cybersecurity policy. A robust IAM practice helps organization to manage the lifecycle of digital identities seamlessly, their governance and security at an enterprise level.

Furthermore, a robust and holistic IAM practice streamlines employee experience in the workplace and supports digital initiatives by improving business agility, efficiency and competitiveness. As a result, employee productivity is enhanced.

Conclusion

The National Cybersecurity Strategy is a message to the whole world about the importance of robust IAM practices in a continuously evolving IT environment. Identity Access Management plays a significant role in managing ever-increasing number of digital identities, addressing emerging threats, improving IT security posture, enhancing digital initiatives, and building a strong compliance framework.

• Continuous expansion in IT Infrastructure
• Prevention of malicious IT activities
• Ensuring compliance and boosting IT operational efficiency 

Today’s enterprise IT infrastructure is so large and ever-expanding that managing it effectively becomes a challenge. And any sort of malicious or unauthorized IT activity on systems and configuration files, if left unchecked, can have dangerous consequences.

What is File Integrity Monitoring?

File Integrating Monitoring (FIM) is part of a broader Information Security strategy that enables IT administrators to track any approved and unapproved changes made to the configuration and critical system files from the baselines. And if any prohibited deviation is detected, FIM enables IT administrators to roll back changes made to those critical files. Not having File Integrity Monitoring (FIM) in place is one vulnerable area that can have catastrophic effects on any organization. 

FIM for Compliance and Audit

FIM is mandated by multiple global regulatory standards, that require organizations to follow best practices to maintain data integrity, data security, and data privacy.

• PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) mandates payment card organizations to have File Integrity Monitoring (FIM) to monitor and detect suspicious changes that happen to the system files regularly.
• The SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley) Act of 2002 specifies FIM as its core requirement.
• ISO 27001 (International Organization for Standardization) requires real-time FIM as the basis of data security policy.
• The NERC (North American Electric Reliability Corporation), one of the crucial American compliance bodies, mandates FIM capabilities for document security.

File Integrity Monitoring (FIM) with ARCON 

ARCON’s FIM tool, which can be easily integrated with any SIEM solution, helps track unauthorized changes in configurations and system files made on the user device in real time and roll back the file history if necessary.

Here are some of the highlights of File Integrity Management with ARCON:

• ARCON’s FIM is an automated process that ensures continuous verification of every system file alteration against baseline configuration
• ARCON’s FIM has the File Access Report capability that enables IT administrators to know the access details of each file accessed by the IT user
• The IT user access details extracted by FIM are based on several parameters, such as access patterns, access reasons, and the context behind the access
• The reports generated by ARCON’s FIM provide an assessment of the validity of the changes done to the files at a given point of time
• The reports are customizable and can be downloaded in PDF, MS Word, MS Excel, and CSV formats

Conclusion

FIM is essential for ensuring data integrity, but it is also a requirement to maintain IT operational effectiveness as well. Without FIM, organizations risk facing operational challenges. Think about a typical IT environment. If approved and unapproved changes to critical system files are undocumented or there are no alerts in place, organizations can face untoward risks resulting in IT ineffectiveness and operational challenges.

“Change is inevitable” and “Evolution is never-ending”! 

This adage particularly holds true for IT infrastructure and operations. Indeed, in an extremely vast IT setup, new IT boundaries (and new IT challenges) are emerging as organizations model their data center architecture in hybrid (partially on-prem data centers, partly in the cloud) or multi-cloud environments for operational efficiencies.  

Why new IT challenges emerging? The reason being that increasing adoption of multi-cloud and hybridization of IT infrastructure is changing the IT security landscape. From an access control perspective, data breach, insider threats and third-party attacks threats are inevitable as end users have a growing number of access paths to confidential information. 

This emerging IT challenge paves the way for steadfast digital security wherein managing a vast number of digital identities for end users and administrators demands a careful implementation of broader Access Management (AM) framework. 

Access Management (Converged Identity Management) initiative includes Privileged Access Management (PAM), SSO, MFA, Identity and Access Management (IAM), and Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) while Cloud Infrastructure and Entitlement Management (CIEM) capabilities provides risk assessment and threat prediction capabilities in multi-cloud environments.

An effective, carefully crafted, and mature Access Management and CIEM framework not only provides role- and time-based secure access to the target systems and applications but also ensures real-time alerts on perceived threats. Furthermore, from a compliance perspective, a robust IAM and CIEM framework ensures user governance.

In this blog, ARCON has highlighted two time-tested reasons why Access Management and CIEM will spearhead the most sought-after IT security initiatives in the coming days. 

Secure confidential information and highly sensitive data in remodeled data center environments.  

1. Adoption of Multi-cloud Platforms

In one of its reports, “Projecting the Global Value of Cloud,” Mckinsey says that large enterprises aspire to have roughly 60% of their environments in the cloud by 2025. Indeed, nowadays, almost three out of four businesses adopt multi-cloud platforms. It helps enterprises meet the requirements arising from daily IT operational and infrastructure use cases through various cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.

Hundreds of human and non-human (digital) identities accessing cloud resources, consoles, and workloads for day-to-day use cases, on the other hand, have exposed enterprises to the risk of a data breach. 

The challenges:

• Each cloud console has it own set of access management mechanisms 
• Managing the growing number of complex and dynamic cloud infrastructure entitlements 
• Difficulty in having complete control and visibility of over-privileged users  
• Detecting potential threats from anomalous identities 
• Enforcing access control regulations across multi-cloud environments

ARCON’s CIEM platform addresses administrative challenges spread across cloud platforms. The solution provides the ability to manage the cloud infrastructure through a unified engine. It ensures the monitoring, controlling, and managing of cloud entitlements spanning multiple cloud platforms. 

ARCON Cloud Governance Platform for CIEM ensures: 

1.  Role-based restricted access to the target systems / applications. 

2. AI-based automated anomaly detection capability that helps cloud security teams associate a risk score with each entity based on their activity on the cloud platform. It provides the administrator with an overview of the riskiness required to take appropriate action to remediate it using an AI-based recommendation model associated with each entity. 

3. Controlling over-entitlements (Provision/DeProvision policies,groups) by following the ‘Least Privilege’ principle.

     2. Hybridization of IT infrastructure

The year 2022 can be considered the first year of post-pandemic age. And the world has seen rapid growth in cloud computing to scale IT operations last year. Not just to manage day-to-day administration, there are too many business applications across the IT environment that boost the demand for and importance of cloud technologies. As a result, the proliferation of cloud technologies is now unstoppable.

However, there are organizations that are unprepared (or sometimes reluctant) for this transition. Unlimited security worries, a fear of mismanagement in handling advanced technologies, and sometimes cost are the reasons behind the same. As a result, they end up adopting a hybrid work culture where both on-cloud and on-premises infrastructure, including legacy applications, coexist. 

Challenges in hybrid environments: 

• Controlling the end-users in a centralized manner
• Managing all kinds of identities – standard, privileged, and non-human
• Monitoring and managing the privileged users seamlessly
• Reducing the number of logins (SSO)
• Additional layers of validating end users (MFA)
• Meet compliance requirements- Least privilege principle (identity governance)

ARCON’s Converged Identity platform enables seamless integration of both on-prem and on-cloud IT resources through one unified access control framework. 

Through  a converged identity management platform, IT security and risk management teams

can ensure: 

1. Analytics and Reporting 
2. Provisioning and deprovisioning of identity for life cycle management 
3. Access request
4. Workflow matrix management 
5. Identity authentication with MFA 
6. SSO for seamless user experience 
7. Authorization of end users 
8. Identity administration and governance 

Moreover, ARCON provides:

• A broad set of connectors that eases the integration of IT resources with different applications in a hybrid environment.
• Flexibility with tailor-made gateways that cater to both on-prem and multi-cloud environments

The role of IGA in today’s IT environment

If we consider the changing threat patterns in the Identity Access Management landscape, strong identity governance has become extremely essential to building a comprehensive IT security infrastructure. Today, the threat surface created by the ever-increasing number of digital identities, is quite large. Every identity, especially a privileged identity, in the IT infrastructure needs to be treated as a perimeter in itself. If not governed, the anomalous behaviour associated with every access goes unnoticed, and analysis of the threat possibilities is also not done. With this, the lifecycle of every identity remains improper, which bears security and compliance risks.

The threats magnify when a large number of human and non-human identities exist without any well-defined role in a distributed IT environment. Critical access management criteria such as fine-grained access, just-in-time privilege access, or rule-based access are extremely important to establish a viable risk assessment practice. It aids in the development of the desired identity lifecycle management. 

ARCON’s Converged Identity Platform addresses the identity governance challenges in every access control use case.

• It ensures that the right end-user has access to the right system at the right time for a right purpose.
• It seamlessly validates each identity access and its activities as per the role and time of access.
• It improves identity lifecycle management by segregating the roles and responsibilities of the identities as per the policies.
• It modifies end-user details as per configuration and even deletes or revokes elevated rights if required.

Conclusion

A resilient AM and CIEM architecture is the need of the hour in the IT security space. In fact, it is going to drive critical managerial IT decisions in the coming days. A mature AM and CIEM model solution will aid in the creation of a robust digital ecosystem, whether it is cloud implementation, hybridization of work environments, or managing identity governance in a hybrid IT environment.

Furthermore, government rules and regulatory mandates of data-security make it highly imperative for a company to ensure data security measures everywhere in the IT environment. It is more necessary in a shared and distributed environment where the critical information is shared among multiple stakeholders. Data security measures helps to protect business information from unauthorized access and malicious third-parties.

Data Privacy vs Data Security

Confidential business data and its security should not be treated lightly by enterprises that are accumulated or transferred every day. In order to safeguard fundamentally sensitive information such as digital identities, finances, business contracts, strategic blueprints and even medical records.

Cyber criminals and other malefactors look for loopholes to access volumes of potentially valuable data (in terms of money). However, not everyone is aware of or can comprehend the distinction between data privacy and security. As a result, the terms are frequently misunderstood or used interchangeably.

The distinction between privacy and security boils down to whose data is protected, how it is protected, from whom it is protected, and who is responsible for it. However, the primary difference between security & privacy is that security is inclined towards safeguarding data from malicious threats, whereas privacy is concerned with data usage – who is accessing what and why? 

Data security is meant to protect sensitive information. Data privacy deals with who is accessing which data that could be protected from cyber threats. Regardless of who the unauthorized person is, data security is primarily concerned with preventing unwanted access, mostly with malicious intent. Organizations can ensure this by deploying IT security tools and advanced technologies. IT security policies also play a big role to prevent sensitive business information from data breaches.

The Importance of data privacy and data security in current scenario

Financial data, enterprise data, healthcare information & other personal consumer or user data can become deadly if they get into the wrong hands. Due to some lack of secured access control mechanisms, enterprises might be subject to fraud and identity theft.

Furthermore, a data breach may jeopardize the security of the entire business set up. And once it happens, it exposes the confidential information to a competitor or in the gray market. Data protection regulations come into play in this situation. Safeguards against data loss or corruption are also included in this approach. SMEs and MNCs are also included in this approach. Every organization might face alarming consequences if they don’t have adequate information security processes in place.

Conclusion 

As our computing dependence rises, there are a lot of potential threats to our data. We can lose data due to a system failure, computer error, or a hacker’s manipulation. Private data and its security should not be treated lightly by enterprises as it is the core of any business. ARCON provides modern, advanced and industry-specific information security solutions that ensure business scalability, continuity and compliance.

According to a research by Microsoft Security Intelligence, 44% of overall cyber attacks in 2021 were in the education industry. This is alarming given the fact that cyber attacks are typically associated with banking and government organizations. 

Starting from 5 years old pre-primary kids to 20 years old college students – the entire education sector has come down to virtual mode due to the global pandemic. To learn alphabets, solve mathematical problems, know historical facts, teach chemical formulas – both students and teachers are counting on smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktops to ensure continuity of education. Not just in virtual classes, but also for the administrative procedures in schools, colleges and universities like new admissions, preparing academic calendars, examinations or even report cards have gone digital for convenience and safety. However, questions have been raised by parents, teachers and cyber experts – are we digitally safe in the education industry?

IT Security Scenarios in Education

Cyber criminals have targeted institutes to breach confidential personal data. The most vulnerable targets among them are :- 

• Names, addresses, contact details of students and their parents
• Social security numbers of students, their parents and local guardians
• Transaction history and payment mode of parents who paid admission fees and tuition fees online
• Digital annual report cards, promotion certificates, school-leaving certificates, character certificates and more
• Institute database consisting of students’ records, teachers’ records, details of non-teaching staffs and even investor/ investment history

Since everything has been digitally transformed and most of the communication between students, parents and school authorities are done through emails, virtual meeting applications and other online modes. Thus the IT security risks escalate.

Where are the IT Risks?

The roots of cyber risks in educational institutions lies in both IT and non-IT circumstances. These risk factors in this industry are less discussed but highly affected. Let us delve a bit deeper.

Conclusion

Cyber Criminals have started to misuse pandemic as a weapon to target the education sector. The sudden shift from on-prem classes to remote learning has deteriorated the situation. With the students increasingly using their personal computers, laptops, smartphones and unsecured networks to join online classes, the threat vector of the education sector is proliferating. It’s high time for the education leaders to prioritize cybersecurity immediately and steer their organizations towards digital safety.

A lot has been discussed over remote workforce and WFH challenges in the last two years. The faster acceleration of WFA (Work From Anywhere) or hybrid work environment of late has enhanced productivity but at the same time created new challenges for the IT security workforce. In addition, there are several non-IT resistance that create severe hindrance inside the organizations while they toil hard to ensure security and business productivity. Hence, as new risks evolve, the attack surface expands and the security is compromised. 

The Non-IT Challenges

Some recent cyber incidents in the public sector and other industries have triggered warnings regarding non-IT threats among organizations.

• Data breach in one APAC aviation organisation leaked thousands of passenger details due to malicious insiders
• Details of Covid-19 positive patients were leaked online last year in Indian subcontinent
• One of the Nationalized banks in APAC region suffered data breach of millions of customers due to password hack

All these incidents apparently pinpoint security vulnerabilities inside the organization. However, in the back stage, there could be reasons like cultural resistance and administrative hindrances that lead to data security uncertainties. When we talk about Non-adherence to the IT security policy or lack of robust password management and multi-factor authentication, the first thing that strikes our mind is ‘the organization lacks robust IT security infrastructure.’ Rarely do we think about the employee resistance to upgraded policies or non-acceptance of new technologies by the employees that might have resulted in data breach incidents.

Let us brainstorm the non-IT challenges that could stop organizations from an uninterrupted business process.

Obstacles from Non-IT Threats

The IT department in the organizations directly or indirectly face the non-IT challenges as a part of work culture. What has been observed from the trends, many organizations, especially from the public sector are challenged time and again by the workforce and administrative policies like allocation of budget on time, limited skill set and non-acceptance of challenges, resistance of  adoption of the right technology, reluctance to take ownership of new technology/ policy, confidentiality of the adoption of new technologies and more. These typical challenges elevate the IT risks to a new level and eventually it impacts the reputation of the organization.

• Non-Acceptance of New Technologies: Requirement-based adoption of new IT technologies is very often prevented by the workforce. Resistance to any kind of changes, even if it is required, is a fundamental human tendency and it plays a big role in preventing implementing new technologies. As a result, the IT security infrastructure lags behind and the vulnerabilities increase in no time.
• Limited Skill set: Many organizations face this quite frequently and commonly. Adoption of anything advanced and new completely depends on what kind of skilled IT personnels the organization has in its team. For instance, if an organization plans to adopt cloud infrastructure for maintenance of data, they need to adopt necessary security measures for the IaaS environment as well. However, if they do not have an adequate workforce with the necessary skill set, then technologically the organization falls behind. Eventually, the chances of cyber incidents aggravate.
• Reluctance to take Additional Responsibility/ Ownership of the New Technology: This is a highly common constraint faced by organizations globally. An individual or a team who is habituated to handle a predefined set of responsibilities, denies to take any additional task even if it is critically required from IT security perspective. Hence, it creates an obvious set back in implementation of new technologies in the organization and subsequent chances of cyber catastrophes. 
• Altercation among Employees due to Change of Roles: The changing dynamics in the IT landscape have increased access control challenges. As a result, there is a change in the roles and responsibilities of the employees. This alteration leads to friction among employees and hence there is resistance from the employees whenever any change is required. A candid and prolonged talk with the employees/ end-users delays in decision making and eventually the implementation is also delayed.
• Non-Availability of Resources: Adoption of any new technology requires additional resources to understand it, deploy it, and train the functionalities among the team. Hence, non-availability of the required resources forces the organization to either refrain from adoption or keep the decision of adoption on hold. As a result, even if the organization is aware of what to be done to improve their IT security measures, they can’t act fast enough. 
• Frequent Change of Management: If the governing bodies of an organization change frequently, then any kind of decision gets delayed. This is quite a common corporate challenge but it is critical for IT security. Change of person means change of mindset, altar of thought process and thus, the overall repercussions fall on the decisions. In case of adopting IT security measures, it heavily delays the process of adoption and eventually IT risks increase.
• Diversity of Nationalities: This is an occasional challenge for large MNCs. When the governing bodies have multiple people from multiple nationalities and industries, the decision making is affected. Different opinions about necessary IT security measures vary a lot as geography and area of experience results in too many options on the table. For instance, a person handling IT security in the BFSI or Telecom industry might not give the same level of importance to IT security compared to that of other industries. Eventually, the critical IT decisions get postponed repeatedly or at times go nowhere. 
• Outsourced IT Team: Many organizations count on Managed Service Providers (MSPs) or outsourced IT security teams to manage their overall IT infrastructure. As a result, any kind of alteration in the policy or any ad hoc requirement of IT security requires boardroom discussions or team meetings which at times delays the new technology adoption processes.

Conclusion

Organizations in the post-pandemic era have hastily embarked on advanced digital transformation to survive the cut-throat competition. The malefactors are continuously threatening them with evolving threats time and again. Every organization is ready to shield their digital assets from cyber criminals and thus counting on prompt adoption of new, relevant and adequate IT security measures. However, if the employees are reluctant to extend their helping hands on time, then the overall objectives of IT security is subdued.