Identity and Access Management Best Practices

Identity and Access Management is a critical component of modern-day cybersecurity. Often abbreviated as IAM, it refers to a collection of technologies, policies, and procedures that assist organizations in managing and verifying the identities of individuals and devices, granting access to data and other resources, and keeping track of who has accessed what information.

Now more than ever, businesses everywhere need to ensure that only authorized users can access sensitive information, applications, and systems. However, managing identities and access rights can be complex and challenging, especially in large organizations.

This is where Identity and Access Management best practices come into play. In this article, I will explore some of the IAM best practices for effective Identity and Access Management, which can help organizations improve their security posture, reduce the risk of data breaches, and ensure compliance with regulations. Here we go!

IAM Best Practices

Audit Existing and Legacy Systems

First and foremost, you should start auditing legacy and existing systems within your company. This step is important for the discovery of different gaps and various opportunities. This also means that you should define your IAM solution’s goal by considering different types of users and accesses.

Implement a Zero Trust Security Model

A lot of organizations still have technologies, apps, and platforms that are developed with implicit trust features. Implicit trust refers to the ability of a system to retain information about users who have accessed the network or logged in to a tool, which eliminates the need for the system to frequently prompt the user to verify their identity. The security posture of your company may be seriously jeopardized by these negligent access permissions if an unauthorized party manages to obtain access to your system via remembered credentials.

In the changing environment of modern corporate networks, it is best to assume that no one can be trusted unless it is proved otherwise.

The fundamental tenets of a zero-trust security paradigm are: never trust, always verify; presume breach; and apply least privileged access. By implementing a Zero Trust framework and services that integrate with IAM, organizations can always ensure that users are who they say they are prior to getting access to corporate resources. This continuous authentication reinforces Identity and Access Management best practices by lowering the possibility of unauthorized users gaining access accidentally or intentionally.

Adopt the Principle of Least Privilege

The Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP) is a security concept that states that every user, application, or process should only be given the minimum level of access or permissions to the specific resources, data, or functionality that is essential for them to carry out their job duties or operational requirements, and no additional access beyond that.

By limiting access to the bare minimum necessary, the PoLP can help reduce the risk of unauthorized access, data breaches, and other security incidents, as it limits the potential attack surface and minimizes the potential damage that a compromised user or process can cause.

Configure a Strong Password Policy

By enforcing a robust password policy, your organization can enhance the security of its confidential data and make it harder for malicious actors to get access to it. Cybercriminals typically use brute force techniques to crack passwords, and if successful, they can potentially obtain unauthorized access to critical information. Check out our article and see how to properly implement a strong password policy.

Consider RBAC and ABAC Approaches

A good practice for implementing identity and access management within your system is to consider a Role-based Access Control (RBAC) approach because this strategy works specifically on simplifying access management as accesses are distributed to users in a tight relation with their company’s job role and thus the distribution of access permissions becomes both clear and consistent.

Attribute-based Access Control (ABAC) is an advanced access control model that uses attributes or characteristics to determine whether to grant or deny access to corporate resources. ABAC policies define a set of rules that consider different attributes including user identity, position, location, time, device type, and other contextual factors to make access control decisions. This enables companies to implement more granular and flexible access control policies than conventional models like Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) or Mandatory Access Control (MAC). ABAC can also help organizations comply with regulatory requirements by enforcing data privacy and security policies based on the attributes of the data being accessed.

When RBAC and ABAC are used together, provisioning and deprovisioning can be automated as users join, leave, or change positions within an organization. Setting up these access control policies is critical for implementing Identity and Access Management best practices.

Deploy Single Sign-On

Single Sign-On (SSO) is a security mechanism that allows users to authenticate themselves once to access multiple systems or applications without having to re-enter their credentials every time. This approach to security provides a smooth and safe authentication process by relying on a trusted identity provider (IdP) that authenticates users and shares their credentials with other systems or programs that support the same SSO standard, such as SAML or OpenID Connect. This eliminates the need for users to remember multiple usernames and passwords, which can increase security risks, and simplifies the management of user identities and access control for system administrators. SSO is widely used in enterprise environments and is becoming increasingly popular in consumer-facing applications as well.

If your company employs SSO to support password and identity and access management best practices, every user’s password should be unique and hard to guess. Passwords should be complex enough to prevent possible security incidents, changed frequently, and not used for different single sign-on requirements.

Consider Multi Factor Authentication

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is a security measure that requires users to provide two or more forms of authentication to access a system or resource. Typically, MFA requires users to provide:

• something they know (a password or PIN)
• something they possess (a token or smart card) or
• something they are (a biometric like a fingerprint or facial recognition)

By requiring multiple factors, MFA can significantly increase a system’s or resource’s security, as a malicious actor would have to compromise multiple factors to obtain access. MFA is widely used to safeguard confidential information and systems and is becoming increasingly important as cyberattacks become more sophisticated.

Enforce Just-in-Time Access

Just-in-time access, or JIT, is an important cybersecurity process in which users, programs, or systems are allowed privileged access on an as-needed basis for a limited amount of time.

Time-limited access makes it simple to temporarily elevate permissions without granting unnecessary authority or access to someone who may not require it on a regular basis. The one-time-use or disposable credentials that are available with these granular authorizations provide enough access without changing your overarching user access provisioning best practices and guidelines. The temporary access approach is particularly beneficial when it comes to users outside the company who might need recurrent access to a system, like partners or vendors.

Centralize Logs

Centralizing logs enables companies to gather, store, and analyze logs from many systems and apps in a single location. Organizations can get greater insight into their IT infrastructure and identify and respond to threats more swiftly and efficiently by aggregating logs in a centralized location.

Centralized logging also assists businesses in meeting compliance requirements by offering an audit trail of system operations and user behavior. Furthermore, centralizing logs allows them to carry out advanced analytics and threat hunting, such as detecting patterns and anomalies that may suggest a security breach or other IT problems. Without centralized logging, organizations might find it difficult to efficiently manage their logs, which can result in security gaps and increase the likelihood of data breaches and other threats.

Audit Orphaned Accounts Regularly

Employees’ network identities may not always disappear when they stop working at a company. That’s when we talk about orphaned accounts. These can be targeted by cybercriminals employing social engineering. To make sure that orphaned accounts are quickly removed schedule regular user management audits. Also, don’t forget to include any contractors or partners who have ceased doing business with the company in these audits.

Implement a Lifecycle Management Solution

There’s a continuous workflow within companies because there are new hires, there are employees changing positions or there are employees who resign. As a result, the identity access management process becomes complex, requiring an effective lifecycle management approach. How does this approach specifically help companies? It automates admin tasks like employees’ access approval, modification, or revocation of access, thus reducing security risks.

Consider Business Type and Size

Identity and access management can be very useful for medium and small businesses alike as companies have to automatically take care of the management of users’ access to different locations, devices, or computing environments. So basically, it’s important to use IAM to simplify user access providing flexibility in the authentication process.

Automate, Automate, and Automate

IAM solutions provide IT teams with many opportunities to leverage automation to improve organizational security. Automation eliminates manual errors, simplifies processes, and meets compliance and governance requirements. IAM technology makes it simple to automate common operations such as account creation, password changes, and provisioning or deprovisioning access for employees.

Additionally, automation simplifies the log and audit processes and generates reports regularly for compliance needs. As a result, one of the most manual tasks that a lot of IT teams frequently perform is eliminated.

In the end, automation assists organizations in reducing help desk requests, saving time and money, and maximizing the potential of their IAM technologies.

Adopt IAM Solutions That Are Compatible with Existing Tools

In order to be effective, IAM technologies must be compatible with existing tools and infrastructure in an organization. This is essential because a lot of companies already have many security products and systems in place, including Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS), firewalls, and Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions, and they must work in tandem to provide complete safety coverage.

If IAM solutions do not work well with existing tools, organizations may experience security gaps, operational inefficiencies, and increased expenses. To enhance the effectiveness of their security operations, enterprises must ensure that their IAM solutions interact smoothly with their existing security framework.

Integrate Privileged Access Management within your IAM Strategy

As the “work from home” setup evolves and expands, more and more users receive privileges because they require differed accessed to carry out their duties, therefore these privileges are no longer limited to just IT admins, as anyone may now become a privileged user. That’s why the necessity to integrate an efficient Privileged Access Management approach into an Identity and Access Management Strategy has become more and more self-understood.

Because privileged accounts have special permissions and are connected to aa company’s most valuable information, they need special attention and supervision that can only be obtained via a robust PAM strategy powered by an automated Privileged Access Management Solution that will effectively manage the approval/denial flow to privileged sessions.

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Why Choose Heimdal® Privileged and Access Management?

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• it supports PEDM-type (Privilege Elevation and Delegation Management) non-privileged user account curation functionalities for AD (Active Directory), Azure AD, or hybrid setups, thus removing the risk posed by over-privileged accounts;
• it gives you power over what happens during an elevated session and stronger security against insider threats;
• if paired with our Next-Gen Antivirus & MDM, it automatically deescalates user permissions on threat detection;
• it gives you flexibility in the approval/denial flow since you can grant or revoke permissions from anywhere in the world;
• it supports zero trust execution;
• it supports just-in-time access: the privileged session has a limited timeframe, dramatically reducing this way the time an attacker would have to move laterally across the network if he had previously managed to get access to a privileged account;
• you can remove local admin rights using Heimdal PAM closing off OS and web vulnerabilities this way;
• you can prove compliance with NIST AC-5 and NIST AC-1,6.

What’s more is that it works even better when paired with Heimdal Application Control, a solution that allows you to whitelist or blacklist applications based on file path, publisher, certificate, vendor name, software name, MD5, and more, protecting thus your critical business assets.

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Conclusion

Although the identity and access management industry is constantly changing, there are some core IAM best practices that can help your organization as your IAM strategy evolves. You may implement these best practices to boost your security posture and expand your IAM framework.

Antonia Din

PR & Video Content Manager

As a Senior Content Writer and Video Content Creator specializing in cybersecurity, I leverage digital media to unravel and clarify complex cybersecurity concepts and emerging trends. With my extensive knowledge in the field, I create content that engages a diverse audience, from cybersecurity novices to experienced experts. My approach is to create a nexus of understanding, taking technical security topics and transforming them into accessible, relatable knowledge for anyone interested in strengthening their security posture.