The content of this post is solely the responsibility of the author. AT&T does not adopt or endorse any of the views, positions, or information provided by the author in this article. Identity and access management has emerged as an essential security element for organizations. A study reveals that 80% of global IT decision-makers have already adopted or are planning to adopt an IAM solution in the upcoming years.

Have you ever heard the saying that the greatest benefit of the cloud is that limitless resources can be spun-up with just a few clicks of the mouse? If so, you would be best served by forgetting that saying altogether. Just because cloud resources can be spun-up with a few clicks of the mouse does not mean that they should be. Rather, prior to launching anything in the cloud, careful consideration and planning are a necessity.

As the basis of pretty much every consumer system available today, Discretionary Access Control (DAC) is everywhere and used by everyone. The files on your computer, the media and applications on your smartphone, and even your social media content. They all use DAC to manage permissions. That’s in part because DAC is easy to manage and understand. But DAC also has a few glaring issues when it comes to cybersecurity.

The shift towards hybrid work models has expanded the perimeters of work, adding to the burden on IT teams as they fight to stay resilient in the face of increased attack surfaces. All it takes for an invasion into an enterprise’s IT infrastructure is one compromised identity. So, what are enterprise identities? These are the user names, passwords, networks, endpoints, applications, etc., that act as gateways to business-sensitive information.

Policy-based access management (PBAM) uses decoupled policy as code and a policy engine to provide real-time authorization decisions throughout the cloud-native ecosystem. This article presents an overview of policy-based access management, its benefits and implementation methods.

Enterprises cannot implement Zero Trust cybersecurity without real-time dynamic authorization and authentication for every access request. The principles of Zero Trust and Identity and Access Management (IAM) best practices help fill the gaps that traditional cybersecurity systems often create and ignore.

Identity and access management (IAM) is an integral part of security systems. Without proper authentication and authorization, it would be impossible to practice cybersecurity principles such as zero trust and least privilege. By now, most organizations have a firm grasp on the identity part of IAM, including concepts like multi-factor and token-based authentication.

Traditional or static authorization methods no longer meet the demands of today’s digital business environment. Data breaches are on the rise (a 23% increase in 2021, as per the Identity Theft Resource Center), forcing organizations to re-evaluate their security and compliance practices.

Multiple reports show that people don’t take the necessity to pick secure passwords for their login credentials and personal devices seriously enough. According to Verizon’s 2022 Data Breach Investigations Report, 80% of incidents resulting from hacking attacks involved weak and compromised passwords. These findings make us wonder whether confirming a user’s identity just once at login is enough. Should this be a repeated procedure?