The Complexity of Managing Digital Identities and Access Rights, and How to Cope

Managing digital identities and access rights are key tasks that organizations of all sizes and in all industries are facing. As new technologies keep emerging at an ever-faster pace and systems are increasingly interconnected, these tasks are getting more and more complex.

In this blog post, we show what the complexity involves, what challenges it brings and how organizations can master them, as well as what additional benefits a comprehensive solution provides.  

Important concepts 

Before turning to the challenges, however, it is good to briefly talk about three important concepts that will come up. Those are:

• Identity Management (IDM), which centers on the lifecycle of digital identities,
• Identity and Access Management (IAM), which includes IDM but has a more general focus on access control and authentication of identities, and
• Identity Governance and Administration (IGA), which focuses on governance as an important topic but has much overlap with IAM.

 The following figure visualizes the relationship between these concepts: 

The distinction between IDM, IAM, and IGA is useful because tools typically focus on one of these concepts. However, the challenges that organizations face come from all areas and can most likely not be solved with one tool. Thus, it is essential to think in terms of a mix of tools – an «identity fabric» (see How and When to Improve Your Identity and Access Management Strategy with Identity Fabrics and 8 Questions on Identity Fabrics with Olivier Pallière) – that covers all the organization-specific requirements.

When we talk about managing digital identities and their access here, we refer to all related aspects. Moreover, we not only refer to technology, but also to organizational measures and processes, because the best tool is useless if it is not used appropriately. 

7 areas where complexity reigns 

The complexity of managing identities and access rights consists of several interrelated factors. Here are seven common areas where complexity reigns:

1. Diverse systems and applications 
   Identity and access management needs to happen across a variety of systems, applications, and platforms that all have their own requirements and protocols. Modern businesses rely on a mix of cloud and on-premises applications, each with their own access mechanisms. Legacy systems may not be designed to support modern identity protocols. Differences in authentication standards, APIs, and security policies across platforms make maintaining a consistent identity framework a challenge.
   
   
   
   How to cope:
   
   
   • Establish a centralized IGA solution that provisions and manages identities and access rights both on-premises and in all cloud environments. This ensures the visibility and security of all access to all data.
   • Consider a setup with an internal or external identity provider to allow easy and unified access across applications. In such a setup, the identity provider takes care of managing identities and authenticating the users, while the applications only receive the authentication status and the attributes of the users. This is also called an identity federation.
   • Control access to legacy systems by using API gateways or also via identity federation with an identity provider.
   • Ensure regular audits and a high degree of automation to manage the technical complexity of diverse systems and applications.
2. Authentication mechanisms
   Implementing and managing various authentication methods, such as passwords, biometrics, and MFA, requires sophisticated technology and coordination. Additionally, users hate to have to log in all the time: They want simple and secure login mechanisms as well as a seamless experience across various applications. This is true for both customers and employees.
   
   
   
   How to cope:
   
   
   • Implement Single Sign-On (SSO) across all applications. This is realized with an IAM tool for session handling that manages all connections.
   • Choose authentication methods according to the sensitivity of the applications and data that are accessed as well as user experience. Passwordless methods like FIDO2 are often more comfortable and more secure than the traditional login with username and password. A central IAM tool that is well integrated and supports state-of-the-art authentication methods is needed here.
3. Authorization and access control 
   Defining and enforcing granular access control policies, such as role-based access control (RBAC) and attribute-based access control (ABAC), necessitates detailed planning and constant updates. Ensuring that the right people have the right level of access at all times is essential. Over-permissioning can expose sensitive data, while under-permissioning can hinder productivity by preventing people from accessing or even seeing applications and data that they would need for their tasks. Too much granularity in the role definitions quickly leads to an explosion in the number of roles that make a regular review of all access rights almost impossible.
   
   
   
   

   How to cope:
   
   

   • Establish a fully integrated IGA system to manage roles in all applications. Using an IGA system is central to coping with this challenge, as only such a system can provide unified and secure access control with relatively little effort.
   • Set up a proper role model that includes dynamic assignment of access rights based on policies and attributes, like user behavior, user device, or geographical location of the access request, to prevent role explosions.
   • Consider a zero trust architecture that requires continuous authentication and least-privilege access to realize secure access control by design.
   • Use tools for privileged access management (PAM) to secure high-risk accounts by enforcing stricter controls and monitoring privileged sessions. They can also be used to effectively secure technical accounts that are used to automate processes.
4. User lifecycle management
   

   Every employee, contractor, and partner has an identity that evolves over time. From onboarding and provisioning, to the change of roles and responsibilities, to deprovisioning and offboarding – managing the entire lifecycle of user identities is a challenge. Failing to efficiently and completely manage this lifecycle can lead to security risks like privilege creep, where identities have unnecessary access, or to orphaned identities that can be leveraged in a cyberattack.
   
   
   

   How to cope:
   
   

   • Integrate an IGA system with HR systems to enable automatic provisioning and deprovisioning of identities and access rights when employees join, move to new positions, or leave.
   • Automate user lifecycle management with IGA tools ensure efficiency, consistency, and security.
   • Establish regular access reviews with tools that provide the required information about access rights of identities to prevent privilege creep.
5. Security and threat management 
   To protect against a wide range of security threats, such as phishing, brute force attacks, and insider threats, advanced security measures and continuous vigilance are imperative. Measures include, e.g., phishing-resistant MFA, AI-driven anomaly detection, and continuous authentication. While these security features enhance protection, they also add complexity to system maintenance. Regular updates, threat intelligence analysis, and adapting to new attack vectors require dedicated resources and expertise.
   
   
   
   

   How to cope:
   
   

   • Use well-integrated IAM tools to implement phishing-resistant MFA with FIDO2, passkeys or hardware security keys, as well as continuous authentication based on monitoring of user behavior. The tools may also be used for AI-driven threat detection.
   • Consider another defense layer: Automated threat intelligence and response via SIEM and SOAR solutions. These solutions deal with the complexity by aggregating all available information and analyzing it. They can analyze threats, automate responses, and adapt to evolving attack patterns. Moreover, they can even detect attacks after an attacker has already gained access to a network or a device
6. Scalability 
   

   Ensuring that the systems for managing identities and access rights can scale to accommodate more users, more systems, and more data adds another layer of complexity. Such systems must scale efficiently without compromising performance. Bottlenecks in authentication requests, slow synchronization across systems, or failures in real-time access control can disrupt business operations and lead to system vulnerabilities.
   
   

   How to cope:
   
   

   • Consider using cloud-based identity services that automatically scale to handle growing authentication and authorization demands.
   • Set up load balancing and redundancy to allow the distribution of authentication traffic across multiple servers and failover mechanisms to prevent bottlenecks.
   • Use asynchronous processing to reduce the load by decoupling authentication and provisioning processes, as they usually have a different urgency: Authentication needs to happen immediately, while waiting a few minutes for initial access to an application is often tolerable.

   • Implement a microservices-based IAM architecture with modularized services to ensure seamless scaling and integration with modern applications.

7. Interoperability
   Achieving interoperability between different identity management solutions and standards (e.g., SAML, OAuth, OpenID Connect) involves careful planning and implementation. A lack of standardization can lead to inconsistencies in identity verification and access control. Additionally, ensuring that identity data is synchronized across all integrated systems without conflicts or delays demands robust identity federation and synchronization mechanisms. A lack of interoperability may lead to identity fragmentation, which increases security risks and administrative burden.
   
   
   
   

   How to cope:
   
   

   • Adopt open standards by ensuring that all systems support widely accepted protocols like SAML, OAuth, and OpenID Connect for seamless authentication and authorization.
   • Implement identity federation by using a centralized identity provider to unify authentication across different platforms and applications.
   • Enable real-time identity synchronization by deploying tools for directory synchronization to keep user identities updated across all connected systems.

Next to these 7 areas, there are some other factors that can add complexity to managing identities and access rights:

• Poorly understood requirements
  Organizations often lack a clear understanding of their access control needs, their available resources and their core objectives. This may lead to a misaligned implementation, where the systems and processes in place fail to meet business requirements or are unnecessarily complex and cumbersome.
  
• Regulations and compliance
  Organizations are more and more subject to laws and regulations that affect digital identities, for example data privacy laws or resilience requirements. These legal requirements change over time, and systems as well as processes need to be adapted.
  
• Trends and emerging technologies
  

  Trends and emerging technologies such as the public E-ID, self-sovereign identities (SSI) and artificial intelligence can enhance or disrupt an organization’s identity and access management capabilities. This constant change makes it more difficult to implement and integrate the right tools.

• New work modes
  

  Every device, data transfer, and access point in a network has the potential for exploitation. With the move to remote work and hybrid access to applications, controlling and securing all these possible access methods to data becomes more and more complex.

To address all these challenges, a clear identity and access management strategy is needed. That strategy must align with the overall business strategy to effectively cover current and future needs, and it constantly has to be reevaluated due to changing business requirements and goals.

The hidden benefits of a comprehensive solution for identity and access management

We talked much about the complexities and thus about the challenges of managing identities and their access. However, if the right interplay of technology, organizational measures, and processes is set up, a comprehensive solution can even bring benefits beyond just making it work.

Enhanced user productivity

One of the largest benefits of optimally integrated tools and processes for identity and access management is increased productivity.

IAM and IGA systems reduce the time wasted on password resets, access approvals, and account setups by streamlining and standardizing many of these repetitive tasks, allowing employees to focus on their tasks. Features like SSO and automated provisioning also enhance efficiency across the organization by reducing the number of logins, while still enabling all the security features needed.

Especially features like MFA or SSO make it easier for remote workers to log in and access their various tools without the need to remember multiple passwords.

But not just logins become faster. Anything to do with digital identities, from changing access rights to on- and off-boarding, becomes more efficient with systems especially designed for such tasks.

From obstacle to enabler

In particular the customer-facing aspects of identity and access management are often seen as obstacles. When a new digital service should be launched, the integration into the customer IAM system looks like a burden that needs to be done, but that only costs time and brings no benefit in itself.

However, when access management is already part of the design phase of the new service and when a well-integrated and feature-rich customer IAM system is in place, this turns from an obstacle to an enabler: The customer experience can be optimized with fast registration flows, convenient authentication methods, and optimal realization of security and data privacy requirements. Thus, the right customer IAM solution can become a competitive advantage that allows faster time-to-market of new services, higher conversion rates and happier customers.

Cost savings through centralized management

Organizations tend to associate IAM and IGA tools with upfront investment and high costs. However, there are many cost benefits that IAM systems provide day after day. For example, IAM systems can reduce the costs of managing network access by bundling diverse assets and creating a single access point. They can help streamline certain tasks, like resetting passwords, and they allow for safe automation of processes that would have been difficult to automate otherwise.

Centralizing identity management also reduces IT overhead, eliminates redundant accounts, and helps prevent security breaches, which can be financially catastrophic. In addition, it saves time and reduces audit and compliance costs through automated reporting.

In other words: A carefully implemented IAM solution keeps the total cost of ownership (TCO) low, letting you save time and money in the long run.

What to expect in the near future?

Digital identities and their access rights are a cornerstone of internal and customer-facing process digitalization. The management of these identities becomes more and more complex, but the available tools and technologies also become better and better. A selection of the right technologies together with appropriate organizational measures and suitable processes not only allows to cope with the increasing complexity, but also to unlock the benefits of this development.