Identity and access management (IAM) is a complex discipline that encompasses several distinct tenets, such as multi-factor authentication (MFA), single sign-on (SSO), and identity lifecycle management (ILM). When it comes to IAM, organizations have widely varying levels of maturity. While some have full-featured, modern IAM solutions, others are just moving to cloud- or SaaS-based applications and manually creating users and passwords.
If your organization falls into the latter category or is just in the beginning phase of your IAM program, you can take your identity management efforts to the next level by starting with the most logical first step in the IAM maturity model: federated identity management.
Federated identity management, also known as federation, is the most simplistic tenet of identity management. Most organizations can use federated identity management without implementing a full-scale IAM solution.
Before discussing federated identity management further, it’s important to understand basic authentication. You might often hear the terms authentication, SSO, and federation used interchangeably, but these capabilities have separate and distinct meanings. Let’s take a step back and explore each term.
The most basic of these three concepts, user authentication, is a process used to prove that a person (or entity, such as a computer system or piece of hardware) is who they claim to be. There are two steps involved in the authentication process: identification and verification. During the identification step, the claimed identifier is presented to the identity system or application. The most common identifier used is the standard username (e.g. jdoe).
Next, in the verification step, the user must prove they are who they allege to be. Information must be provided or generated to verify the binding between the information and the identifier. The standard password is the most common method used for verification (e.g., MySecretPassword_123!). In short, an example of authentication is when user credentials, such as a username and password, are entered and verified before access is granted into the system.
On the other hand, SSO is a feature of an authentication mechanism that allows for a single authentication process to be used across multiple systems. With true SSO, a user can access a set of applications and is only required to authenticate (i.e. log in) once in a central portal. From there, the user can seamlessly access various applications during a single session, such as a typical workday, instead of entering their credentials into each application.
Federated identity management is a specific type of SSO that enables organizations to integrate with applications without exposing critical systems or data by leveraging a trusted party to identify and authenticate constituents. Trust is established between the systems ahead of time to verify this mutual exchange of information. For example, companies that consistently rely on third-party applications can federate a set of applications to allow users to log in at one central point and enter a username and password.
Federated identity management significantly benefits organizations, particularly those in the beginning stages of an IAM program or those currently using or switching to cloud or SaaS-based applications.
A primary benefit of federated identity management is that it simplifies the user authentication experience, saving time and headaches. Users log in to the central point for authentication once and then seamlessly continue their day-to-day processes without constantly entering and managing separate credentials for each application.
In addition, organizations look to federated identity management to reduce administrative overhead. For example, employees will always be coming and going, and your organization may require a password reset every six months. With federation, your administrative team makes these updates in one central portal instead of multiple applications for each user.
Finally, federated identity management is used to increase your security posture in identity management and can even be combined with MFA. When authentication is streamlined to one central location, very little information is shared with external applications due to the trust established beforehand. Adding MFA, such as a one-time password or push authentication, adds an extra layer of protection from a security standpoint.
Identity Automation can help you implement federated identity management in your K-12 district or higher education institution. Contact us to get started.