Cloud Computing IAM Best Practices.

Identity and Access Management (IAM)

It has been well established that certain traditional IT security paradigms must be reimagined when approaching cloud native security. One component of a strong security posture takes on a particularly critical role in the cloud – identity. The concept of identity in the cloud can refer to many things, but for the purpose of this discussion, we’ll focus on two main entities: users and cloud resources.?

Historically, defense-in-depth was mostly performed through network-layer controls. Advanced threat prevention tools are able to recognize the applications that traverse the network and determine whether or not they should be allowed. This type of security is still very much required in cloud native environments, but it’s no longer sufficient on its own.?

Public cloud providers offer a rich portfolio of services, and the only way to govern and secure many of them is through identity and access management (IAM).?

Identity and Access Management (IAM) lets administrators authorize who can take action on specific resources, giving you full control and visibility to manage cloud resources centrally. For enterprises with complex organizational structures, hundreds of workgroups, and many projects, IAM provides a unified view into security policy across your entire organization, with built-in auditing to ease compliance processes.

IAM Best Practices

1) Integrate CIAM with Enterprise Security

Many organizations still rely on ‘security silos’ that leverage different strategies and technologies. However, this reliance can be counter-productive over time. Instead, organizations must hammer out an integrated security model. So, without further ado, integrate the cloud-based identity management solutions with enterprise security.

2) Understand Access Controls

Access management for cloud assets is vital. Organizations must understand who has access to cloud, the level of access, and what all possible tasks they can do with that access. Leverage AI and ML technologies to gain valuable insights into the processes that control access across your cloud environment. Use these insights to monitor your cloud and restrict malicious access and entitlement creep.

3) Grant Least Privileges

When forging the cloud IAM strategy, follow the ‘principle of least privilege’ to grant only the necessary permissions to perform the task. Scope out what level of access users need to perform their duty, and hammer IAM policies that enable them to perform only those tasks. It is wise to provide a minimum level of access permission at the start and grant additional permissions as required. Starting with permissions that are too lenient can be risky, and squinching them later can be challenging.

4) Strong Password Policy

Implement a robust password policy that obligates your users to create strong passwords and update them regularly. The policy must define password requirements, such as minimum length and characters to be used and how frequently it must be rotated. It is wise to automate a password change as most tend to ignore this aspect.

5) Ensure Multi-factor Authentication

Enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all the users. Organizations that don’t implement extra layers of identity protection are more vulnerable to credential abuse attacks. A credential-based attack can lead to data compromise. This can be averted by MFA.

6) Monitor Privileged Accounts

Securing privileged accounts is the foremost step in protecting critical assets. Cybercriminals target these accounts to gain access to an organization’s sensitive resources. To secure privileged access, one must isolate the accounts from the risk of being exposed to a cyber attacker.

?7) Enable Conditional Access

Your employees and clients may often access your cloud resources by using a wide variety of devices and apps, from any location. Therefore, organizations must ensure that these devices meet their security and compliance standards. Tailor access control policies based on conditions for accessing your cloud resources.

8) Regular Audits

Cybersecurity is ever-evolving. You must regularly review your cloud identity management framework and plan future security improvements. Regularly audit user credentials and track the lifecycle of passwords and access keys. The audits will shed light on the vulnerabilities that the cloud has.

9) Active Monitoring

Deploy an active identity monitoring system to help quickly detect suspicious activities and trigger an alert for a prompt response. Organizations must implement a method that identifies attempts to sign in from unfamiliar locations, infected devices, and suspicious IP addresses, among others.

As cloud adoption increases, IAM solutions will likely continue to gain popularity to address security conundrum. Many businesses appreciate the need for strong IAM strategy to deal with all their security demands. The mentioned best practices can help you achieve robust identity and access capabilities in the cloud and create a secure cloud environment.

Identity and Access Challenges

IAM and SSO

Most businesses today use some form of single sign-on (SSO), such as Okta, to manage the way users interact with cloud services. This is an effective way of centralizing access across a large number of users and services. While using SSO to log into public cloud accounts is definitely the best practice, the mapping between SSO users and IAM roles can become challenging, as users can have multiple roles that span several cloud accounts.?

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Effective permissions

Considering that users and services have more than one permission set attached to them, understanding the effective permissions of an entity becomes difficult.?

“What can Mary access? Which actions can she perform on these services? If she accesses a virtual machine, does she inherit the IAM permissions of that resource? Is she part of a group that grants her additional permissions?” With layers upon layers of configurations and permission profiles, questions like these become difficult to answer.?

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Multi-cloud

More than 84% of organizations use a multi-cloud strategy. Each provider has its own policies, tools and terminology. There is no common language that helps you understand relationships and permissions across cloud providers.?