Third-party access comes with some risks but this industry will not go anytime soon. It offers organizations benefits such as increased productivity, collaboration, and efficiency that enterprises today cannot compete without opening up their data and infrastructures. But, a lot of companies do not have dedicated controls in place for third-party access, usually due to their legacy identity and access management (IAM) systems that do not support them. Keep reading to know the issues associated with legacy IAM systems:
Legacy IAM Systems were Designed for the Closed IT and Workforce Environments
Legacy IAM systems were not designed for today’s workforce. A decade ago, such solutions were enough to give internal employees access to data and systems they needed; however, they fall short in terms of giving access for today’s external users.
Unlike conventional employees, third-party users often don’t exist in the employee directory of organizations and are not covered by employee processes and policies to request, de-provision, provision, and audit access. This leads to a serious burden on IT that should manually manage lifecycle tracks like onboarding, offboarding, as well as provisioning and de-provisioning entitlements for many third-party accounts. Usually, IT departments do not have the bandwidth for this undertaking and tend to shift to the third-party vendors.
They Leave Companies with Inadequate Policies and Procedures for Privileged Access Management
Almost all organizations outsource some IT functions to reduce costs, address skill gaps, and free up employees to concentrate on core functions. But, organizations that choose to assign necessary privileges third-party technicians, service providers, and developers should walk this fine line carefully. Unlucky, a lot of legacy IAM solutions do not have the access controls to address remote vendor access as a privileged access point which requires tight security controls. The lack of these controls leaves IT managers resorting to the using of blanket or bull full-permissions. If this occurs, a company’s security is a step closer to being compromised. Third-party accounts that have unmanaged privileged access leave companies exposed to breaches, malware introduction, and data leaks.
Importance of Modern IAM System
Businesses today should invest in modern IAM solutions that manage a wide range of users and network entry points. The best IAM platform can be configured and deployed easily to support access controls and full lifecycle management for external user groups like customers, partners, and contractors. In addition, organizations can better secure their privileged access points by combining contemporary IAM solutions with robust multi-factor authentication.