Identity and access management (IAM) is a crucial component of information security, as it controls who can access what resources and how. However, IAM can also be a source of frustration and confusion for users, especially if it is too complex, restrictive, or inconsistent. How can you design a user-friendly IAM system that balances security and usability? Here are some tips to consider.
Before you implement any IAM solution, you need to understand your users' needs, preferences, and behaviors. Who are your users, and what are their roles and responsibilities? What are their common tasks and workflows, and what resources do they need to access? How do they interact with your system, and what devices and platforms do they use? How do they prefer to authenticate and authorize themselves, and what are their expectations and challenges? By conducting user research, surveys, interviews, or focus groups, you can gain valuable insights into your users' perspectives and pain points, and design an IAM system that meets their requirements and expectations.
While prioritizing user needs and behaviors is essential, it's important to recognize that overemphasizing user-friendliness can potentially compromise the safety of the system. By understanding users' roles, responsibilities, tasks, and preferences, organizations can tailor their IAM system to align with user expectations. However, it's important to ensure that user preferences do not undermine the security of the system. it's crucial to acknowledge that the cybersecurity landscape is evolving rapidly. accommodating user reluctance to stronger authentication methods might expose the system to higher risks.The delicate balance between security and convenience is a significant consideration.
Converse energy and focus on the least taxing tasks is in our all nature. Consequently, 1/3 of American workers would work on a low-value task instead of remembering and entering a password. Your IAM should reflect this reality by making the end user's authentication and authorization process as easy as possible. Single Sign-On plug, plug-and-play tokens, and unified accounts are all prerequisites to building an IAM that users want to use. After all, they reduce end-user's interaction with the system and, thus, the complexity of the tasks at hand.
Here are some additional tips for designing an effective IAM system: Use a single sign-on (SSO) solution to simplify the login process for users. Implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) to increase security. Use role-based access control (RBAC) to restrict access to resources based on user roles. Monitor user activity and take action to detect and prevent unauthorized access. Keep your IAM system up to date with the latest security patches and updates.
Map your user journey within the system before deciding on what to change. A user's journey is important to identify bottlenecks in your existing system. With a journey map, you can decide if you need to rebuild everything from ground-up or make some tweaks to your system to improve user satisfaction.
One of the main goals of IAM is to enforce the principle of least privilege, which means granting users only the minimum access they need to perform their duties. However, this does not mean that you should create overly complex or granular policies that make it hard for users to understand or follow. Instead, you should simplify your policies by using clear and consistent rules, categories, and labels, and avoiding unnecessary exceptions or variations. You should also document and communicate your policies clearly and regularly, and provide feedback and guidance to users on how to comply with them.
Principle of Least Privilege is a very useful tool. However, by doing so, we should also balance our end-state objectives from the system to define the policies. Arriving at the balance between policies and ease of use is the biggest challenge as we should define this on a case-to-case basis. Not all end state requirements are the same.
Another way to improve the user experience of IAM is to optimize your processes for efficiency and convenience. For example, you can automate or streamline the processes of provisioning, deprovisioning, and updating user accounts and permissions, and reduce the manual steps or approvals involved. You can also implement self-service options for users to manage their own profiles, passwords, or access requests, and provide easy and reliable ways to recover or reset their credentials. Moreover, you can leverage technologies such as single sign-on (SSO), multi-factor authentication (MFA), or biometrics to enhance the security and ease of authentication and authorization.
SSO and MFA can be straightforward, if your organization is using them already. However, when implementing biometrics, you need to factor in additional challenges like privacy, data storage, ethical considerations, etc. Another factor to be considered is, if your data-store is hacked, then it will be impossible to recover in biometrics enabled system as it is already compromised.
Finally, you should not assume that your IAM system is user-friendly just because you designed it with the best intentions. You should test and evaluate your system regularly and systematically, using methods such as usability testing, user feedback, or analytics. You should measure and monitor key indicators of user satisfaction, such as completion rates, error rates, response times, or abandonment rates, and identify any issues or areas for improvement. You should also solicit and listen to user feedback, and incorporate it into your design and development process. By testing and evaluating your system, you can ensure that it meets the changing needs and expectations of your users, and delivers a positive and secure user experience.
One of the useful and easy-to-obtain key indicators will be the request to IT service desk regarding password reset and IT access. These can provide useful insights on what are the difficulties encountered by users.