Idaptive Looks to Unify Access Control
Idaptive has launched a cloud service that promises to streamline the process of embedding access controls within customer applications.
Company CEO Danny Kibel said the Next-Gen Access Cloud combines single single-on (SSO), adaptive multi-factor authentication (MFA), user behavior analytics (UBA) and other access control technologies in a single platform. Spun out of Centrify last fall, Idaptive is attempting to streamline the processes associated with implementing access controls as the number of applications being developed by organizations continue to multiply, said Kibel.
Benefits of Next-Gen Access Cloud include an ability to convert raw access data into actionable intelligence by constantly learning from millions of daily logins and access attempts and then automatically generating individual user profiles based on login context and risk. Those capabilities eliminate the burden of having to manually define and manage complex rules and policies at a time when cybercriminals are more adept than ever at stealing credentials.
Kibel said the biggest cybersecurity challenges most organizations face today when it comes to managing identity is trying to implement and master the various access control technologies being surfaced by one of the most fragmented sectors of cybersecurity. By making all those capabilities available as a service, IT organizations will be able to more consistently implement access control technologies in a way the reflects both the economic value of an application and nature of the potential threats the might be encountered, said Kibel.
Furthermore, Kibel noted that packaged applications that adhere to established access control standards could also be modified to take advantage of Next-Gen Access Cloud.
Down the road, the centralization of access control technologies in the cloud will also make it more feasible to take advantage of machine learning algorithms and other forms of artificial intelligence (AI) to automate access controls, he said.
As the number of applications being accessed by a much wider array of types of devices continues to increase, it is already apparent most IT teams are not going to be able to cope with identity management relying on existing processes. Increased reliance on some form of automation to manage identity is now all but inevitable. That becomes even more critical as the number of applications that get exposed beyond internal employees steadily increases, as more processes become digitized.
In ideal world, of course, access controls delivered as a cloud service will become a natural extension of any set of best DevSecOps processes. Access control services simply would be programmatically invoked by developers as each application is built.
In the meantime, IT organizations would do well to examine how much time is being wasted every day managing passwords that have been shown to be not especially secure. There now are a wide range of alternatives to securing access to applications. The issue going forward isn’t so much how to master each of those technologies, but rather how to make them as accessible as possible to applications at the time they are being built and deployed.
