Leveraging the Evolution of Technology Into Anything as a Service for Better Identity Orchestration

As-a-Service has created a more level technology playing field, allowing companies of any size to have best-of-class applications and best practices at their fingertips. It has democratized IT infrastructure by making modern digital technology accessible to all. Identity-as-a-Service or IDaaS, based on the XaaS model, is a cloud-delivered identity and access management (IAM) service, built and operated by third parties and consumed through subscription models. IDaaS masks the complexity that comes with the management of identities in today’s complex networks explains, Asif Savvas, senior vice president, product and offerings, Simeio.

Biological changes in species over time is a classic evolutionary thesis. It’s a process that keeps diverse plants and animals thriving, as their DNA and genes are successfully passed down over generations. We witness an evolutionary change in many areas. Computer technology has evolved from room-sized machines in the 1960s to highly sophisticated computers small enough to fit inside watches, smartphones, and other devices.

Today’s digital technology landscape is accelerating quickly, and organizations relying upon past, and even present technology, may miss out on the future. Reaping the benefits of ever-advancing modern digital technologies requires forward-thinking and agile businesses. With these qualities as part of their DNA, they can effectively progress within our fast-moving world. 

Navigating Ever-Changing Technology With the Appropriate Course

IT and security leaders are well aware of their need for digital dexterity and a frictionless customer approach. However, adapting to change and prioritizing digital transformation initiatives can be difficult, rather like texting an important correspondence while driving a Formula 1 supercar — a tricky endeavor. 

Organizations have many technology options at their disposal, from in-house developed, maintained, and supported applications and infrastructure to diverse as-a-service applications and infrastructure managed by third parties. The virtues of the pervasive cloud have given rise to an anything-as-a-service (XaaS) model that is disrupting countless legacy solutions and industries. There are as-a-service offerings for applications, infrastructure, platforms, networks, security, storage, and more. 

XaaS is leaving no industry or vertical market untouched, and that’s a very good thing. The as-a-service model has proven to have many advantages, not the least of which are service and operational agility and the move away from capital-intensive IT infrastructure.  

As-a-service has created a more level technology playing field, allowing companies of any size to have best-of-class applications and best practices at their fingertips. It has democratized IT infrastructure by making modern digital technology accessible to all. Any organization, large or small, can now wield a virtual technology toolbelt to quickly and easily tailor low-risk and cost-efficient solutions to accomplish any of their business initiatives.  

Big businesses will no longer hold a huge technology advantage over small businesses. The advantage now goes to organizations that leverage modern technology and XaaS to get to market quickly, cost-effectively and deliver the best user experience. The XaaS model can improve the effectiveness of in-house IT and security teams, helping them accomplish digital transformation initiatives faster and leverage economies of scale with minimum to zero capital expenditures. They can now focus on technology innovations and solutions that drive strategic business initiatives.

Learn More: 3 Tips for Identity and Access Management in the Evolving Security Landscape

From Humble Beginnings, IDaaS Has Evolved Into a Robust, Multi-Faceted Solution 

Identity as a service, or IDaaS, is a cloud-delivered identity and access management (IAM) service built and operated by third parties and consumed through subscription models. 

IDaaS began in 2009 when Okta introduced a basic use case using a federated single sign-on (SSO) as-a-service. This enabled enterprises to securely access their SaaS services using enterprise credentials. While this was a great beginning, this represents roughly five percent of today’s IAM use cases.

IDaaS has evolved to include the entire digital identity fabric that encompasses authentication, federation, MFA, authorization, identity governance (IGA), privileged account management (PAM), identity proofing, compliance, risk analysis, audit and reporting. Most on-premise IAM software vendors, such as SailPoint, CyberArk, and Oracle, now offer versions of their products as stand-alone, cloud-based IDaaS. 

Evolutionary Change Brings Identity Orchestration

Identity as a service shortens time-to-market, lowers costs, and enables IT and security teams to focus on improving their business’s services. They are free from having to purchase software and hardware, troubleshoot, fix, maintain, and support complex identity infrastructure, business process changes, and application integrations.

As with most technologies that evolve over time, identity and IDaaS have introduced a new set of challenges with an ever-growing number of vendors and solutions. Add to this complexity the number of enterprise applications and infrastructure that need to integrate into the identity fabric, and it becomes an integration, management, and operational nightmare.

Identity orchestration providers offer a common identity fabric to create an identity service mesh. They design, build, implement, and run comprehensive cloud-based identity solutions that address myriad use cases, using best practices for IAM policy, design, and operations. Identity orchestration takes a holistic view of identity and integrates diverse and feature-rich IAM capabilities with enterprise business applications. They wrap a virtualization layer that abstracts IAM functions and presents a common identity control plane for the enterprise and its various user communities.

Learn More: The Current State of MFA and Why You Might Not Be As Protected As You Think

The Misnomer About IDaaS

IDaaS is not just about authentication. It now encompasses IGA, PAM, CIAM, Risk Intelligence, Identity Proofing and more. There are many technology providers within each of these categories that excel in their specific niches. An enterprise that needs to deliver on a digital vision has to integrate these technologies to achieve outcomes that will drive business results.

They accomplish this by utilizing orchestration as an abstraction layer on top of, say, Okta, where they can consume other vendor capabilities, like identity proofing, IGA, etc., sequence them, and apply them to a business process flow. This creates a more robust solution that meshes capabilities within a microservice layer to deliver a better product and user experience. Every vendor, and each function offered, becomes a building block that can be put together for myriad use cases. 

Enterprises typically have a jumble of heterogeneous legacy systems, multiple vendor on-premise solutions, cloud IaaS, PaaS and applications. Identity orchestration will take these elements and build a comprehensive identity solution to meet business goals and objectives. By reusing an enterprise’s existing identity investments where it exists and integrating them into a modern as-a-Service framework, enterprises can cost-effectively leverage the best IAM features and capabilities for their unique use cases. 

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