An Overview of Identity and Access Management with CIEM

CIEM has been developed to integrate multiple cloud platforms and is not limited to one specific IaaS. Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management acts as the single point of authentication, authorization, and provisioning for a wide range of cloud services through a single Identity Provider (IdP).

Whichever identity provider you use will integrate seamlessly into CIEM.

Why Should You Ensure Safe Identity and Access Management?

Managing identity and access across multiple cloud platforms is becoming a challenge with the increasing number of cloud-based services and applications.

CIEM offers an easy way to integrate different identities (e.g., corporate directory, Amazon Web Services, or Windows Azure AD and support multiple cloud platforms from a single Identity Provider (IdP).

What Are the Threats to IAM in Your Cloud?

Multiple credentials pose a considerable risk to the security of your company. If these are not managed safely, you cannot ensure that all access requests are genuine and can potentially lose control over your cloud environment.

The leading cause of security breaches is the inability to know who or what is accessing sensitive data and services at any given time.

CIEM prevents this threat by enabling a true identity federation, which means that your cloud users will be able to access multiple cloud platforms using their corporate directory credentials.

CIEM is designed with the highest level of security in mind and offers compliance with international standards like government information regulations like FISMA. CIEM also leverages SAML 2.0, the most widely used and trusted standard for web-based authentication and authorization.

What are the Advantages of Identity and Access Management Integration?

CIEM has been developed to offer a genuinely simplified way of managing identities and entitlements across multiple cloud platforms from one central location, which ensures:

• True identity federation with single sign-on (SSO)
• Simplified cloud provisioning and de-provisioning processes
• Improved compliance with international standards (e.g., FISMA)
• High level of security, as cyber identities remain under the control of corporate directory providers and cannot be misused by hackers on the internet.

CIEM helps understand what cloud services are being used, by whom, and how they are related. You can protect your organization’s data in the cloud through compliance policies that ensure only authorized users access to appropriate services.

CIEM simplifies identity and access management in your cloud by providing a single Identity Provider (IdP) to manage user identities and provide seamless integration across multiple cloud platforms.

What Method Can CIEM Offer for Identity and Access Management?

Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management offers a single Identity Provider (IdP) and a single point of authentication to integrate with all major cloud platforms.

It is an open-source software development kit offering a solution to the problem of identity and access management (IAM) across multiple cloud platforms. The SDK allows developers to integrate their own IAM solution with any cloud platform.

CIEM also includes a role-based access control (RBAC) mechanism, which provides admins with complete visibility and granular control over the subscriptions and resources residing in each cloud platform.

It is possible to group resources into logical units assigned to roles. The RBAC model allows you to create flexible policies that map organizational business processes to the IAM structure.

How Does the CIEM Solution Function?

The CIEM solution provides a centralized way to manage identity and access across multiple cloud platforms. The Identity Provider (IdP) is the central component of the solution and is responsible for the authentication and authorization of users.

The IdP can be any identity provider, such as Microsoft Active Directory, Amazon Web Services, or Windows Azure AD. And the Service Provider (SP) is the source of cloud services and interacts with the Identity Provider (IdP) for authentication and authorization.

Meanwhile, the Service Consumer (SC) is responsible for consuming cloud services from any configured Service Provider.

The CIEM solution has the following key components:

1. Authentication:

All users need to authenticate to the Identity Provider before accessing any service from a Service Provider.

2. Authorization:

After authentication, the Identity Provider will determine which services are allowed for each user. Every Service Consumer is mapped to one or more permissions in the Identity Provider. Example permission types are “full access,” “read-only,” or “no access.”

3. Provisioning:

Once users have been authenticated and authorized, the Identity Provider will automatically provision the appropriate cloud services for them. No manual intervention is required.

Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management aims to connect all the services in your cloud environment to be managed centrally.

It makes it possible for you to manage all users, groups, roles, and policies from a single location, regardless of the cloud platform they are using. It not only simplifies IAM but also significantly reduces the management overhead.

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