What is Cloud Identity Management?

What is Cloud Identity Management?

Cloud Identity Management is a system for managing user identities, access permissions, and authentication processes in cloud environments. It uses a centralized approach to manage user credentials, roles, and permissions so organizations can control and secure access to cloud-based applications, services, and resources.

The Key Features of Cloud Identity Management

Identity Provisioning and Deprovisioning

Functionality that creates, updates, and removes user accounts across various cloud-hosted services. These tools automatically grant employees, contractors, partners, and vendors appropriate access to cloud-based systems, applications, and data during onboarding and revoke access to resources immediately when users’ roles change or for any reason no longer require it.

Single Sign-On (SSO)

Enables users to log in once and access multiple cloud-hosted applications without requiring reauthentication. This reduces the need for users to create and manage passwords to gain access to every cloud-based resource and dramatically improves the quality of user experiences.

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

This functionality adds extra layers of security by requiring users to engage multiple verification methods to access cloud-based applications and resources. MFA uses passwords, biometric data, or authentication tokens to verify users’ identities across an organization’s IT infrastructure.

Access Management

This enables administrators to control which users or groups can access specific cloud-hosted resources based on roles and policies while ensuring users have access rights sufficient to perform day-to-day responsibilities and at the same time do not violate organizational security policies and adhere to compliance regulations such as separation of duties (SoD).

Directory Services

Stores and organizes user identities across all cloud-based resources and provides authentication and authorization services for connected systems. Organizations frequently implement centralized databases such as LDAP and Active Directory to more effectively manage user identities in the cloud.

Federated Identity Management

This is a method that enables organizations to integrate with external identity providers to provide user access across multiple cloud-based systems, services, or organizations using a single set of credentials. It allows different organizations or systems to establish trust relationships, enabling seamless cross-organization access without requiring users to maintain separate credentials for each system.

Audit and Compliance Monitoring

Tracks user activity and generates logs in cloud-based applications and resources to detect and respond to unusual or unauthorized access attempts and provide security analysis and ensure compliance with organizational policies and industry-specific regulations.

Benefits of Cloud Identity Management

Enhanced Security

Cloud Identity Management ensures that employee, contractors, partners, and vendors user identities for cloud-based applications and resources are properly created, changed, and disabled when employees they join the organization, move departments, get promoted, and leave the organization. Strong authentication and centralized controls reduce unauthorized access risks and protect sensitive applications and data.

Optimized Operational Efficiency

Automates identity-related tasks, such as Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) and Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC), that predefine which systems a new user should have access to, based on their role in the organization. Automating access control enables administrators to immediately review access rights to cloud-based resources and ensure compliance with various regulations so that new users can be productive more quickly. This reduces the complexity of assigning user access rights to various cloud environments and reduces administrative overhead costs. A Cloud Identity Management system also scales to easily manage access for growing teams or organizations without adding costs.

Improved Compliance

Simplifies audits and helps meet regulatory requirements by managing and auditing access rights to sensitive information hosted in the cloud.

Higher Quality User Experience

Features such as SSO and self-service portals eliminate the need for users to remember multiple credentials to access cloud-based resources and simplify the process.

Where to Learn More and Get Help

Cloud Identity Management is an essential tool in a modern organizational Identity and Access Management (IAM) strategy. A SaaS-based Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) solution like Omada Identity Cloud enables organizations to implement a centralized approach to managing user credentials, roles, and permissions across all cloud-based environments. Omada Identity Cloud operates seamlessly with other IAM tools to streamline identity workflows, enhance security, and achieve compliance across on-premises, cloud-based, and hybrid IT architecture. Get a demo.