In this digital world, cyber-security is a top priority for many companies. Many of the systems are hacked by manipulating user credentials. Identity and Access Management tools are designed to stop such mishaps.

According to compliance regulations like HIPPA, Sarbanes-Oxley, etc., companies are required to guard the identity management of employees and customers alike.

What is Identity Management?

Identity Management (IdM), in business terms, refers to the management of roles and access privileges to individuals. These individuals are often your employees, customers, or any freelancers.

The main purpose of Identity Management is to determine the digital identity of those individuals. The ultimate purpose is to manage the access lifecycle.

Why should you choose open-source software for identity management?

·       Source code access

·       Community-supported

·       Faster implementation

·       Extensible and ready to scale

·       Better IT team involvement for enterprise

·       Avoid vendor lock-in

How does identity management solutions work?

In years past, a typical Identity management system comprised four basic elements:

i)                A directory of the private data the system uses to define individual users (think of it as an identity repository);

ii)               A group of tools for adding, modifying and deleting that data (related to access lifecycle management);

iii)             A system that regulates user access (enforcement of security policies and access privileges);

iv)             Auditing and reporting system (to verify what’s happening on your system).

Regulating user access has traditionally involved a variety of authentication methods for verifying the identity of a user. Hardware tokens and credit-card-sized smart cards served collectively as a component in two-factor authentication, which mixes something you recognize (your password) with something you have (the token or the card) to verify your identity. Software tokens, which may exist on any device with storage capability, from a USB drive to a cell phone, emerged in 2005.

In today’s complex compute environments, alongside heightened security threats, a powerful user name, and password doesn’t cut it anymore. Today, identity management systems often incorporate elements of biometrics, machine learning and AI, and risk-based authentication.

At the user level, recent user authentication methods are helping to better protect identities. For instance, When the popularity of fingerprint sensor-enabled phones has familiarized many of us by using their fingerprints as an authentication method, iPhones came up with a much secure 3D facial recognition to authenticate users rather than using fingerprint scanning.

Benefits of using IdM system

·       Single access to all enterprise resources (SSO)

·       Enhanced centralized privilege management: The right person in the right area.

·       Enhanced centralized security

·       A single data source for HR (Human Resources)

·       Centralizing auditing and logging

·       Easy to manage privileges for enterprise employees

·       Easy to integrate with other enterprise software and mobile applications

·       Avoid accounts overlapping for enterprise systems

·       Audit, track, monitor and report users’ activities

·       Better compliance

Features of an identity management solution

1.    Federated Authentication

2.    Distributed Identity

3.    Multi-Factor Authentication

4.    Customisable Registration & Data Collection Forms

5.    Mobile Optimized Registration Screens

6.    Real-Time Field Validation

7.    Conditional Workflows

8.    Email Confirmation & Password Reset Flows

Implementation of Identity Management Solution Using Open source

There are a lot of open-source tools which are available in the market. Some of the commonly used open-source IdM tools are: 1) OpenIAM, 2) Central Authentication Services (CAS), 3) Keycloak, 4) WSO2, and 5) Aero base. Though all of them have all the basic features like SSO, Password Services, SAML 2.0 Support, OAuth 2.0 Support, etc., CAS, does not support Identity Life Cycle Management, Mobile OTP, and Client Certificate. The best all-rounder IdM Solution currently in the market with all the required features is OpenIAM. At Tetra, we offer a full range of IdM solutions using OpenIAM to customers.