Managing identities in the cloud has been described as a “big mess” by many security pros – and that’s why SC Media decided to focus on this issue as we celebrate Data Privacy Day.
For starters, the comparatively orderly on-prem days in which all identities were managed by Microsoft Active Directory, or network admins could geo-locate an employee based on an IP address that was in the company’s building are long gone.
Rather, the confluence of the cloud accelerated by the pandemic moved companies outside the building, where they are now managing hundreds of applications and data sets, and permissions and access right for all those applications and data.
“For just AWS alone, a company may have 100 different applications,” said Frank Dickson, vice president for security and trust at IDC. “Someone may have access to Salesforce, but only to the files for their customers. So think about the exponential scaling of that complexity across multiple applications and you begin to understand how challenging managing identities in the cloud has become.”
Based on interviews with Dickson and other security pros here’s a list of tips to consider for managing identities in the…
