As a team, we’ve been working hard to deliver on a roadmap of identity and access management capabilities that we believe solve the biggest challenges organizations are facing when it comes to managing identities in today’s dispersed, hybrid cloud environments. Ultimately, our vision is to provide the right building blocks for organizations to build an “identity fabric” that integrates, augments and streamlines the myriad of disconnected and incompatible identity tools organizations are using today.
Let’s dig into what this looks like in practice.
The challenges of managing identity across hybrid cloud
As cloud migration and digital transformation accelerate, organizations are facing a huge amount of complexity when it comes to identity and access management (IAM). They are increasingly working across multi-cloud environments and tools — each of which provides their own set of identity and access management (IAM) capabilities to manage. At the same time, they’re also still relying on legacy systems and architectures, which often lack some of the standard capabilities needed for a modern IAM strategy. Ultimately, these tools are creating a disconnected and complicated web of identities to be managed, with no easy way to integrate or streamline between them. These identity silos disrupt strategic intentions of providing users a consistent and frictionless authentication experience and improving identity security.
Taking an “identity fabric” approach can help organizations bridge the gap between legacy identity infrastructure and modern cloud-based IAM systems. An identity fabric aims to integrate and enhance existing identity solutions rather than replace them. The goal is to create a less complex environment where consistent security authentication flows and visibility can be enforced.
Providing the building blocks for identity fabric
Our strategy with IBM Security Verify is to help clients drastically simplify their identity strategy – by providing them with the foundational building blocks to create an identity fabric. Specifically, we are building flexible and modular identity solutions that are designed to help clients connect their existing IAM capabilities, bridge the gap between legacy and cloud-based solutions, and augment capabilities that are missing from within these respective toolsets.
We are building our identity tools in a way that helps eliminate identity silos and improves user experience across all apps. This includes extending modern authentication mechanisms to legacy apps with no-code changes, enabling a consistent user experience across all applications and improving security posture with real-time behavioral and biometric risk-based authentication.
Gartner® recognition for Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute
IBM was recently mentioned in the 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Access Management, where IBM was named as a leader in this space.
This year’s report focuses on access management platforms that “include an identity provider (IdP) and establish, manage, and enforce runtime access controls to at least cloud, modern standards-based web and classic web applications.” Some highlights on the must have capabilities noted for this market are:
- A directory or identity repository for workforce or external users that includes identity synchronization services
- Identity admin for integrated apps that includes lifecycle and profile management capabilities with support for the System for Cross-Domain Identity Management
- SSO and session management with support for standard identity protocols and APIs for accessing standards-based and legacy apps
- User authentication (including commodity MFA)
- Authorization enforcement (including support for modern authorization protocols, including OAuth 2.0)
Optional capabilities assessed for the AM market included features like journey time orchestration, low/no-code interfaces for customization and extensibility, passwordless authentication and identity threat detection and response.
Ultimately, we believe that the comprehensiveness and flexibility of our current capabilities, combined will set IBM Security Verify as an ideal partner for companies looking to simplify the foundation of their identity management strategy. This foundation has the potential to pave the way for faster and more effective identity-based threat detection and response (ITDR).
Learn more about how IBM Security Verify can help you build a modernized identity and access management strategy: https://www.ibm.com/verify
Receive a complimentary copy of the full Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Access Management report for more details on why Gartner® recognized IBM as a Leader.
Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Access Management, Henrique Teixeira, Abhyuday Data, Nathan Harris, Robertson Pimental, November 16 2023.
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