What is Federated Identity Management?
Interested in improving your company’s identity management? If your company is large, you may want to consider federated identity management, which is an agreement that allows users spanning multiple organizations and/or departments and security domains to use single-sign on to access all their shared networks. The partners are called trust domains, which can include organizations, domains, departments, etc.
What does federated identity management accomplish for an organization?
Federated identity management allows user identities and attributes to be shared across trust boundaries. The federation model can include multiple service providers trusting a single identity provider. Federation describes the trust relationship that exists between these participating organizations.
Identity and asset management (IAM) intersects between user identity management and the control of organizational assets. The need for a unified identity solution is now more imperative as organizations continue to increase use of apps. Some of the apps an organization might install or download contain internal identity stores and processes responsible for user authentication. The widespread use of applications within companies has created additional burden and complexity for the users tasked with using multiple credentials as well as the IT professionals responsible for managing the user identities.
Does your company frequently hire new employees? If so, your IT department is likely well-aware that providing the new hire access to all the necessary resources can be time-consuming. The multi-step process of onboarding new employees highlights the complexities of today’s identity management infrastructure. The need for a federated IAM solution has also increased as organizations integrate new applications within IT workflows.
What types of companies use federated identity management?
A large enterprise with many departments would be a good candidate for federated IAM. By providing a single, trusted identity provider for user authentication, service providers or applications spanning multiple departments can take advantage of set protocols to manage and map user identities. This is done by establishing a mechanism by which trusted third-party service providers can authenticate against a set of credentials without ever needing see them.
What benefits does federated identity management provide?
A federated IAM solution provides significant benefits to an organization, such as:
- Reduced time spent onboarding, managing, and offboarding user enrollment
- Consistent user information across multiple identity providers
- Improve compliance with audit and regulatory requirements
- Increased security for company information systems
Are you unsure whether your organization would benefit from a federated identity management plan? Contact Quanterion’s IT department at IT@Quanterion.com for assistance in determining whether federated identity management is right for your company. Our staff will walk you through the risks and benefits of the agreement based on your company’s goals, size, users, and departments.
This resource was provided by Quanterion Solutions during Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Access additional Cybersecurity Awareness Month resources.
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