What is Identity Fabric?

What is Identity Fabric?

An Identity Fabric is a more dynamic approach to an organization’s identity and access management (IAM) infrastructure. It includes a blend of modular IAM tools for hybrid and multi-cloud environments, supports any human or machine identity, provides advanced analytics, and supports standards-based identity integrations. For identity and access management practitioners, adopting an Identity Fabric approach to IAM can be instrumental in streamlining their organization’s access management processes and enhancing overall access governance and compliance capabilities.

The Evolution from IAM to Identity Fabric

As technology portfolios have expanded and identity management complexities have grown, organizations now require a new strategy to move beyond their costly legacy identity governance and administration (IGA) systems to control operational costs and security risks without hindering business growth. By enabling organizations to extend IAM to any application, including third-party applications and mobile devices, an Identity Fabric driven by a SaaS-based IGA solution provides a seamless and frictionless user experience across diverse environments from on-premises, hybrid, and SaaS deployments. This provides a solution that preserves valuable resources while enabling the organization to dedicate more attention to critical strategic priorities.

Identity Fabric Components

Seamless Connectivity

A configurable framework that connects best-of-breed IAM tools with a wide range of applications and adapts to hybrid and multi-cloud environments with no coding. This extends identity governance to any application including third-party applications and mobile devices for a frictionless experience.

Integration for Advance Security Capabilities

Integration with modular IAM tools that supports distributed multi-cloud identity governance to dramatically reduce the risk of a data breach.

Intelligent Automation Functionality

Machine learning and artificial intelligence that supports faster human decision-making and automates repetitive processes like authentication and authorization.

Challenges that Identity Fabric Addresses

Eliminates Fragmentation and Identity Silos

Identity Fabric provides a 360-degree view of all identity-related activities to manage identity across multiple clouds and eases the constraints on productivity caused by fragmented identity silos.

Mitigates Security Threats

Identity Fabric provides risk-based authentication and multi-factor authentication to reduce the risk of insider threats and external hackers capitalizing on excessive permissions.

Simplifies the Management of all IAM Systems

Identity Fabric unifies various IAM tools and systems (e.g., IGA, PAM, CIEM, DAG, ITDR, etc.) enabling identity governance management from a single place and streamlining operations across the organization.

Scalability to Meet New Organizational Requirements

Identity Fabric simplifies monitoring of user behaviors, managing directory services, and the accommodation of more users, devices, and applications. The configurability and connectivity that Identity Fabric offers makes the solution flexible and adaptable so it can evolve with new regulations and emerging security threats.

Identity Fabric Use Case Examples

The need that drives Identity Fabric adoption is rooted in specific use cases that traditional and even modern IAM struggle to address in the threat landscape of today’s IT infrastructures. These include:

Integration of SIEM and PAM Tools in an IAM System

An Identity Fabric provides continuous observability across all environments to surface additional information for the organization. It bolsters PAM even more by synchronizing with the IGA product who is the account owner, who is the manager authorized to make a request, and who is defined as a delegate. It provides continuous and automated certification for lifecycle management and ownership of external roles and policies.

Leveraging of Third-Party Data

An Identity Fabric helps simplify decision making and externalizes data to help connected solutions manage policies, roles, and entitlements.

Effective Workflow Management Across the IAM Landscape

Identity Fabric enables composable, orchestrated frameworks to manage workflows and adaptive, continuous auditing and provisioning across all IAM tools.

Benefits of Identity Fabric Adoption

Eliminate Compliance Audit and Assessment Failure

The 360-degree view of all identity-related activities that an Identity Fabric provides enables effective audit processes to log what happened when and why.  Centralized IAM management and governance enables organizations to see activity across hybrid and multi-cloud environments and offers the advanced analytics necessary to easily maintain compliance requirements.

Lower Identity Management Costs

An Identity Fabric provides bi-directional context exchange to deliver the visibility and intelligence needed to automate decisions, free up resources, and reduce costs.

Better Decisions on Identity Risk Management

Unifying information from the complete security landscape with an Identity Fabric enables organizations to build intelligence into identity governance. Robust identity analytics drive smarter decisions throughout the identity lifecycle management process and ensure standard integrations across tools and services so organizations can enforce identity policies and share data across other IAM tools.

Where to Learn More

Identity Fabric is an infrastructure purpose-built to integrate modular IAM tools, support various identities, provide advanced analytics, and facilitate standards-based integrations for hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Through robust identity governance, seamless connectivity, enhanced security, and intelligent automation, Identity Fabric is central to maintaining infrastructure and operational continuity, demonstrating compliance, enhancing security, and reducing complexity and cost. See how Omada’s Governance for Identity Fabric can help modernize your identity governance strategy.