How Does Application Access Management Secure Your Organization?

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Unrestricted access to sensitive applications presents significant risks, including data breaches and operational efficiency disruptions. Without effective identity management, these breaches can result in substantial financial losses and legal complications.

However, there is a viable solution: application access management.

With IAM solutions and effective application access management, managing permissions for new hires and departing employees becomes easier, mitigating potential security risks.

A comprehensive application access management strategy encompasses various elements, from authentication and authorization to fine-grained access control.

This article will explore application access management's benefits, key features, and crucial role in safeguarding organizational assets.

In today's digital landscape, where cyber threats are increasingly sophisticated, implementing a robust access management framework using IAM tools is essential for protecting sensitive information and ensuring operational resilience.

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What is Application Access Management?

Application access management is the process of monitoring and managing users' access to your business’s IT resources, which mainly include cloud-based SaaS applications.

The primary goal of application access management is to get complete visibility of users and ensure only authorized users have access to the right resources. This way, you can restrict unauthorized access to SaaS apps.

For instance, let’s say two people join your organization. One has a seniority position, and the other has an associate position. Now, you give the senior person some specific access that the associate person cannot access.

This way, you’re boosting internal security and taking proper measures against the access gap. Here are the four primary components of application access management you need to know:

• A complete directory to recognize the user’s access
• Platforms to automate user’s access through the entire lifecycle
• Oversee and manage the user’s access
• Reviewing access to generate accurate reports

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Why Automating App Access Management is Necessary?

Managing application access manually is time-consuming and error-prone. Even a single mistake can have severe consequences for your business.

However, automating AAM can improve your organization's efficiency, security, and user experience. Here’s why you must automate app access management.

Boosted Efficiency: Automating AAM saves time and effort by swiftly and accurately handling repetitive tasks. Instead of manually granting or revoking access for each user, automation tools do it automatically based on predefined rules.

Reduced Human Error: Manual access management can lead to excessive permissions or forgetting to revoke access, leading to unauthorized access by ex-employees. With automation, you don’t need to worry about human errors.

Higher Scalability: As organizations expand, managing user access manually becomes challenging. Automation helps scale access management efficiently.

Real-Time Response: Automated access systems respond instantly to access requests and security events. This ensures users get timely access and detects unauthorized attempts promptly.

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The Pillars of Application Access Management

AAM has three main parts: authentication, authorization, and access control. These parts make up a complete security system for managing who can use applications.

They all work together to build trust, apply policies, and protect critical data in different types of applications. Let’s examine the pillars of privileged access management.

1. Authentication

Authentication is the first security protocol in application access management. It verifies the identity of users trying to access applications, ensuring that only authorized users are granted access.

But what authentication methods does application access management employ? While there are different methods to verify identity, passwords, fingerprints, and multi-factor authentication are the most effective.

For example, with traditional password protection, users must provide a combination of characters or numbers to prove their digital identities. However, remember that passwords are vulnerable to brute-force attacks, especially if they are short and easy to guess.

Fingerprints or face IDs are much more secure than passwords. They are much harder to crack, even if the hackers implement DDoS attacks.

Last but not least is multi-factor authentication. This is the most secure option, as users must provide different verifications. It reduces the risk of unauthorized access, even if one factor is compromised.

2. Authorization

Once you authenticate a user, the system checks the information and resources they are allowed to access. It will also determine what actions users are permitted to perform within an application.

AAM assigns access rights and permissions based on predefined user roles and needs. This ensures that the user has only the required access to complete their job functions.

3. Access Control

The last pillar of application access management is access control. Once you authorize a user, access control algorithms will determine whether to deny access to the user as per their authorization.

This is one of the most essential pillars of AAM. Access control ensures that employees only access what they are permitted to using a access management solution.

Moreover, your IT departments can leverage access control to create, personalize, or remove privileged accounts and manage user attributes like permissions and roles.

It implements account lockout and password management policies, helping you create and maintain a safe environment for users and sensitive data.

Besides that, access control implements numerous security practices to prevent any unauthorized access. This will help you create an extra line of defense for sensitive data.

Here are two different types of access controls you need to know:

Attribute-based access control: This type of access control evaluates the user's attributes. For example, it will consider the user’s job title, department, or location to determine access rights.

Role-based access control: This type of access control assigns permissions to users based on their roles within your organization. Users are assigned to specific roles, and each role is associated with a set of permissions.

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Now, let’s see how application access management can benefit your business to a great extent.

Benefits of AAM For Your Organization

1. Enhanced Security

Nowadays, data security breaches and unauthorized access are constant threats. AAM is the first line of defense to streamline the login processes across various applications.

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This way, you don’t need to rely on weak passwords for individual apps, a common vulnerability hackers exploit. As AAM implements robust security protocols like multi-factor authentication, you will have extra protection than just passwords.

In addition, AAM helps your business implement granular access controls based on user roles. This ensures that users have access only to the specific data and functionalities they need.

1.1 Mitigating Insider Threats

Traditional user access management often focuses on external threats and neglects internal threats. AAM addresses this problem by implementing robust security measures like MFA.

Moreover, application access management also allows user activity monitoring. This way, you can identify suspicious behavior within applications, such as unusual access attempts or data downloads.

Detecting such activities early will help you take preventative measures and conduct investigations. This approach is extremely beneficial for addressing any insider threats.

2. Improved Regulatory Compliance

Your business may face problems with data security and access control regulations. AAM provides features like auditing and reporting to simplify compliance. It can generate logs of user activity, access attempts, and permission changes.

Thanks to these audits, you will clearly understand user behavior within applications. This will help in compliance reporting and demonstrating compliance with regulations.

AAM also focuses on consistent access policies across all applications. This ensures that everyone in your business follows the same compliance protocols. As a result, you can reduce the risks of accidental non-compliance and potential regulatory fines.

3. Streamlined Access Management

AAM automates many user management tasks, freeing up valuable time and resources for your IT team. When a new employee joins your organization, AAM can automatically grant them access to the necessary applications based on their role.

You don’t need to worry about manual configuration, ultimately reducing the risks of human errors. Similarly, when employees leave, AAM revokes their access to ensure they no longer have access to sensitive data.

Application access management can also help users manage their passwords and profiles. Users can reset forgotten passwords or update their profiles without contacting your IT teams, saving users time and freeing up IT staff to focus on more strategic initiatives.

4. Increased Productivity

As mentioned earlier, AAM simplifies user access and reduces the burden on the IT teams. As a result, you can create a more productive environment within your business.

With single sign-on, users can access all authorized applications with one set of credentials. They don’t need to remember or manage multiple passwords. This ensures a smoother user experience and allows employees to focus on their core tasks.

Furthermore, with automated user provisioning, deprovisioning, and self-service password management, users don't need to contact the IT team. The entire process is automated, saving time and increasing team productivity.

Beyond the Basics: Advanced AAM Features

While the core AAM features are beneficial, advanced functionalities will take security to the next level. These advanced features can boost your business’s security protocols and improve user experience.

1. Single Sign-On (SSO)

Before discussing SSO, let us give you one example. Let’s say you own an office building and manually lock the doors at night every day. Thus, you use different keys for different doors, which is extremely time-consuming and inconvenient.

But what if you have one key for all the doors in your office building? That’s the convenience SSO offers. With single sign-on, you don’t need to remember and manage many passwords for various applications.

Users log in once to the AAM system, a central hub for user credentials. Once verified, AAM grants access to authorized applications. Since users don’t need to re-enter a single set of credentials repeatedly, this will save time and effort.

2. Adaptive Authentication

Application access management can adjust security requirements based on user context and risk factors. For example, if someone accesses sensitive data from public WiFi, it will implement stronger authentication.

On the other hand, if someone accesses internal documents from a trusted office network, the authentication will be less vigorous.

But how does AAM determine the potential risk? It considers user location, device type, time of day, and accessed application.

Based on this assessment, it can require additional authentication steps like MFA for high-risk scenarios. However, the low-risk situations will have simpler logins. This will create a balance between security and user experience.

3. Activity Monitoring and Auditing

AAM can track user activity within applications, such as login attempts, data access levels, and file downloads. Then, it compiles the information and creates a detailed audit.

With activity monitoring, you can detect suspicious or authorized behavior easily. You can also know if unusual access attempts or unauthorized data downloads occur. As a result, you can identify and address potential security threats promptly.

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Moreover, audit trails will provide a comprehensive record of user activity. This is extremely important to demonstrate compliance with data security regulations.

4. Just-in-Time (JIT) Provisioning

Sometimes, your users need temporary access to cloud-based applications for specific projects or tasks. JJT or Just-in-Time provisioning, allows AAM to provide temporary access based on predefined rules.

This way, you can define specific needs for temporary access, such as project duration or data access limitations. Remember that AAM grants access only for the predetermined time frame. Therefore, it will automatically revoke access upon completing the projects or tasks.

This way, you don’t need to worry about unauthorized access even after the users completed their projects and tasks.

5. User Provisioning and Deprovisioning

If you’ve ever managed user access manually, you know how error-prone and time-consuming the process can be. With AAM, you can automate user provisioning and deprovisioning, which will streamline IT workflows.

When employees join your business, AAM automatically grants them access to specific applications. It will do this by determining their roles within your organization.

You don’t need to worry about manual configuration and ensure your employees can become productive from day one.

Similarly, when an employee leaves your organization, AAM revokes application access. This prevents the departed employees from accessing sensitive information.

However, managing user provisioning and deprovisioning alone is not a feasible solution. Why worry about it when you have CloudEagle?

We will ensure the newly onboarded employees can access the right apps from day 1, preventing a common user provisioning mistake. Similarly, when an employee leaves, their accesses will be revoked.

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Alice Park from Remediant used CloudEagle to streamline provisioning and deprovisioning. Here’s what she has to say:

Conclusion

Access management is crucial for your organization’s security. The right access management tools can verify, allow, and manage user access to your business’s applications. This way, you can prevent unauthorized entry and data breaches.

But which suppliers should you choose to enhance security and create a smooth operational environment? Well, you don’t need to worry, as you have CloudEagle.

Our identity and access management features will undoubtedly benefit your business. So, how can CloudEagle ensure the right people have access to the right apps?

CloudEagle provides a single dashboard to manage, audit, and secure access to all your business’s applications. Users can view and request access to the applications they need with a user-friendly application catalog.

Also, CloudEagle will help you track the app access properly. You will know who accessed the applications during compliance and security audits. The CloudEagle portal will let you track who has access privileges to applications.

In short, choosing CloudEagle will help you automate all aspects of your applications’ access. Schedule a demo today, and we will help you manage your business’s application access.

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