Top-performing businesses are increasing their investment in cybersecurity due to the rise of hackers and other bad actors taking advantage of outdated or insecure corporate data networks. Access management and access authentication are two facets of “identity & access management,” the umbrella term for all cybersecurity processes that manage user access on modern business networks.
In this article, we elaborate on the differences between access management and authentication to provide business leaders with the means to deploy or improve the identity & access management systems in their networks.
What is Corporate User Access?
Modern organizational networks are accessed through a set of credentials. Depending on the circumstances, this access could be permanent or temporary. For example, a one-time project could warrant temporary access to a high-level part of the network.
Managing corporate user access is a significant aspect of maintaining employee, consumer, and client trust in modern industries. Identity management is an important topic that covers how employee user access is governed, approved, and revoked and how gaps in this system can lead to network insecurities.
For example, temporary login credentials should be revoked after the employee completes their task. System users should have access to the systems they need but not to extraneous systems, such as those used by higher leadership.
In manual identity management workflows, errors in provisioning and deprovisioning user access can lead to costly security gaps. This implies a need for more advanced identity & access management protocols in modern industries.
Access management and access authentication itemize the security workflow to promote a more productive and secure network. With the help of IAM software solutions, businesses can further automate and optimize these processes, provided they understand the difference.
What is Identity Access Management?
Access management refers to the process of authorizing users to log into a company’s network, access its data resources, or use any of its other digital tools. Access is not granted unilaterally to all systems, meaning certain employees can only access the resources needed for their workflows.
However, that is not the job of access management, which reviews a user’s credentials and approves their login. Access management systems allow business leaders to keep track of all employees authorized to use their systems and spot fake credentials more easily.
They also allow the business to manage more users regardless of location. In an age when 98% of workers desire remote and hybrid work options, individualized access management can be essential to expanding the business’s network of users and systems without compromising security.
Ultimately, the goal of access management is to make sure that the system accurately recognizes each user in terms of their role and personal information. However, manual access management has several drawbacks. Managing user permissions for every employee is a labor-intensive workflow that can easily strain a small IT department, leading to inefficiency and costly errors.
Identity & access management software solutions can help alleviate this burden by automating and centralizing labor-intensive access management tasks.
What is Access Authentication?
While access management and authentication are closely linked, access management stops at identifying the user’s identity to make sure they are allowed on the system. Once identified as a valid user, the access authentication systems check the user’s credentials in more detail.
For example, certain users may be allowed to use the system but not to access specific data. In other cases, verified users may have had provisional access to high-level systems that expired after their project date, warranting renewal of their credentials for all further access attempts.
Access authentication protects documents and data that should only be accessed by higher management while also allowing team leaders to easily promote or demote user access in the event of a role change, departmental change, or updated work model.
Additionally, authentication creates a more secure system by limiting user access to individual workflows, making a breach of lower-level credentials less likely to lead to high-level data theft.
While access management requires managers to maintain employee identities and credentials, access authentication requires constant scrutiny over those employees’ roles, data access privileges, and requirements.
Both access management and authentication are required processes in a healthy corporate cloud environment. When deployed in tandem using a versatile identity & access management solution, they help businesses assure that users are authorized to use the system and only given access to the systems they need.
Contact an Experienced Cybersecurity Team to Optimize Your Identity & Access Management Strategy
IAM strategies allow businesses to refine their security workflows, increase productivity, and scale their networks without sacrificing client confidence. Advantage.Tech provides managed IT, consulting, and cybersecurity systems for over 800 clients across numerous industries.
Since phishers and bad actors have gained new methods to bypass conventional corporate security systems, organizations must respond with greater advances in IAM optimization to protect their employee credentials and sensitive data networks using access management, authentication, and more.
Contact us today to learn how modern IAM strategies can protect your valuable user data from the latest threats.
