Although IT leaders aim to simplify technology stacks, many are forced to introduce point products to add security.
Alongside, organizations now confront a convoluted universe of identities – both human and machine; employee and non-employee. Meanwhile, cyber hostilities and hardening global regulations strain identity and access management efforts. In addition, many enterprises are retooling staffing models and augmenting FTEs with third-party workers and partners.
As the variety (and volume) of identity types grows, disparate products across Identity Governance and Administration (IGA), Privileged Access Management (PAM), Application Access Governance (AAG), and Third-party Access Governance (TPAG) breed further complexity and insecurity.
Governments and other entities are starting to look more closely at how organizations are protecting their data, and not just their internal data, but data accessed by third parties such as contractors, and supply chain partners, as well. For example, the SEC is proposing new rules to address cybersecurity risk. And for companies in regulated industries, compliance violations may materially affect operations. Even user experience deficiencies (for example, stifling end user self-service) hurt.
These dynamics birthed the notion of a Converged Identity Platform – a new model of consolidated, SaaS-delivered identity and access management – pioneered by Saviynt.
We call it the Enterprise Identity Cloud.
Reflecting on the platform innovation, Security Magazine applauds the forward-leap with converged identity.
“[The platform] helps make organizations more secure, compliant with regulations and provides a faster return on investment. It enables greater gains in efficiency for user and application on/off-boarding while supporting and enhancing the auditing process.
It simplifies how users log into systems and apps and maximizes and optimizes existing identity tools, policies, and processes.”
– Market Guide for Identity Governance and Administration, Gartner© 2020
To capitalize on the convergence buzz, platform vendors are quick to tag their solutions as “converged.” But, as enterprises target simpler identity governance they must understand what true convergence is.
Con·ver·gence [kən-ˈvər-jən(t)s]: Identity convergence means a strategic union of access, security, and governance capabilities delivered via a flexible and extensible cloud platform.
Convergence is more than just repackaging distinct entities. Necessarily, it solves identity security lapses inherent with the fragmented approach of using multiple, disparate point products. A truly converged identity platform builds off an elastic foundation to encompass the breadth and depth of identity, access, compliance, behavior, and risk information available in the enterprise.
Saviynt pioneered convergence with its Enterprise Identity Cloud (EIC). EIC consolidates core identity security capabilities into a single solution to centralize identity management and governance with components that share similar underlying processes.
The platform relies on a warehouse that houses identity and access information from sources located on-premises, in the cloud, or in hybrid environments.
To evaluate the reliability of vendors’ convergence claims, verify that an identity security platform is:
Cloud-native to provide flexibility, automation, and speed.
Architecturally unified on a single code base to eliminate security silos, and manage identity security from a single point of control without disruption or lag.
Feature rich with multiple identity capabilities, including IGA, PAM, application GRC, third-party and data access governance to secure human and service account identities.
Integrated with enterprise apps, cloud platforms, security solutions, and collaboration tools.
Automated to reduce manual workloads, and perform routine and low level activities such as lifecycle management and provisioning.
Highly scalable, flexible, and extensible to provide maximum security and protection.
This list begs the question: What are the characteristics of platforms “converged” in name only?
“By 2025, 70% of new access management, governance, administration and privileged access deployments will be converged1.
But enterprises must proceed cautiously.
New vendors market ‘convergence’ without genuinely integrating core identity governance and security capabilities.
Beware of old technology disguised as new: simplicity, security, and user experience are at risk.”
– Vibhuti Sinha, Chief Product Officer
Saviynt Enterprise Identity Cloud (EIC) is our fully integrated converged identity platform that unites core identity governance and security capabilities to protect people, data, and infrastructure.
EIC engages AI/ML to contextualize and reduce risk, automate identity lifecycles, and provide smart recommendations to increase security effectiveness.
Four modular identity security capabilities converge to form the single-platform EIC:
Beyond our “every identity, every app” security ethos, EIC integrates and shares contextual risk intelligence with other identity and cybersecurity tools, including SIEM, XDR, and SASE to enhance threat detection and incident response.
With EIC, multiple identity governance capabilities converge so security leaders can unify controls and risk management for every identity, app, and cloud across the business. Below, we explore each capability.
Saviynt Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) ensures your users have seamless access to necessary resources on-premises, in the cloud, or in hybrid environments. For organizations wanting better efficiency and agility, IGA adds automation and intuitive identity workflows. Our IGA solution is powered by a comprehensive identity warehouse and features an extensive controls library for risk-based, continuous compliance and security.
We built our IGA product to be ‘intelligent at its core’, which means faster access decision making with AI/ML-driven recommendations, remediation, and auto-provisioning capabilities. Security teams can easily ingest any identity, analyze complex access and usage data, and make risk-aware access decisions throughout the identity lifecycle.
Importantly, our IGA is simple and easy to use. By reducing dependency on IT with end-user and admin self-service, and improving visibility, control, and compliance through our Control Center, organizations unlock an efficient, interactive governance program.
THE RESULTS ARE CLEAR:
According to Forrester, enterprises achieve 240% ROI with Enterprise Identity Cloud.
Behind Saviynt’s agile, risk-based approach to Privileged Access Management (PAM) is a fundamental goal: Eradicate persistent accounts, standing privilege, and establish governance from Day 1.
Few PAM solutions support this type of security goal as they tend to scan environments at fixed intervals. The problem is, cloud resources are ephemeral in nature. Due to the elastic nature of cloud, solution designs with fixed scans don’t work. Our PAM solution continuously discovers cloud risks including changes within elastic workloads, new privileged accounts, and access – all in real-time. Misconfigured objects are easily flagged, and remediation steps (including session termination or access removal) trigger automatically.
To reduce standing privilege, security leadership can easily create, approve, and monitor time-bound, role-based privileged sessions. This includes enabling just-in-time elevated access to resources, and monitoring privileged activity while it occurs (or later via session recording).
To shrink TCO, reduce management fatigue, and reduce risk more quickly, Saviynt PAM also supports application onboarding with a simple wizard that includes real-time account, workload, and entitlement discovery.
Saviynt Cloud PAM can help organizations contain sharply rising cyber insurance premiums by demonstrating that they have reduced the risk of a privilege escalation attack.
According to research by Ponemon Institute, 59% of organizations have experienced data breaches caused by third parties2. Still, many organizations operate without robust security controls to support vendor, supplier, contractor or partner access to shared tools, applications, and data sets.
Saviynt’s Third-Party Access Governance (TPAG) solution helps organizations provision and manage access across all environments with confidence.
Security leaders can configure and manage a third-party identity program using an extensive set of pre-built templates, robust control libraries, and an intuitive wizard to reduce application onboarding effort. Saviynt also supports automated access provisioning, requests, and approval – along with essential Joiner, Mover and Leaver processes.
Importantly, Saviynt supports sponsor/owner assignment for each vendor relationship. Sponsors or owners include vendors in routine access reviews and can revoke access if a vendor’s employee terminates employment. This also helps prevent orphaned vendor access.
To improve onboarding experiences, we offer invitation-based user registration and birthright provisioning of account access. In addition, self-service user onboarding adds productivity and lightens administrator workloads.
In order to enforce compliance controls and create readily accessible audit documentation, Saviynt helps map compliance controls to user type, and offers auto-remediation policies to remediate non-compliant identities. Plus, out-of-the-box regulatory compliance reports for Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, GDPR, PCI-DSS, and others makes it easier to enforce compliance controls.
Saviynt’s Application Access Governance (AAG) solution delivers centralized, fine-grained entitlement management, real-time intelligence, and automated remediation to secure applications, users, and data.
Our AAG capability helps enterprises bring identity management and application GRC under one roof, while aligning security policies across all apps, devices, and operating platforms.
In addition, deep integration with mission-critical enterprise tools gives enterprises unparalleled visibility into access permissions and user activities. Our AAG solution also features preventive and detective Segregation of Duties (SoD) analysis capabilities, as well as out-of-the-box rulesets for a granular view of application risk.
These capabilities support ongoing audit readiness with continuous compliance across applications like SAP, Workday, Oracle, and other SaaS and on-premise applications. For many enterprise applications, Saviynt has rulesets with preset definitions for risky combinations of fine-grained entitlements to expose a true view of SoD.
Saviynt is quickly fixing the fractured identity landscape with a comprehensive, integrated identity platform where usability meets high-functioning governance and security.
Along the EIC journey, enterprises routinely exceed modernization goals including:
EIC reduces application onboarding times by up to 70% by using pre-configured templates, a robust control library, and an intuitive wizard. To compress implementation and deployment timelines, EIC quickly connects cloud platforms, enterprise applications, databases and directories, and cloud storage with pre-built and out-of-the-box integrations.
With hundreds of certified integrations, enterprises can quickly add applications and ingest usage and risk signals from critical enterprise applications.
The platform also supports Bring-Your-Own (BYO) capabilities for existing workflows, security keys, vaults, and forms. Enterprises can still leverage previous investments and provide a continuous user experience. In addition, automation eliminates administrator responsibilities around low-level activities, speeds decision making, and reduces fatigue with access and role recommendations.
EIC supports a 360-degree view of the entire identity landscape–whether on-premises, multi-cloud, or hybrid. Converged identity capabilities deliver an administration experience complete with unified intelligence, reporting, and dashboarding.
Leaders can quickly assess their identity program’s health with actionable reporting against key performance indicators.
A powerful identity warehouse centralizes all identities and eliminates security silos. Our warehouse features an analytics engine that performs machine-learning activities including risk-based data and usage pattern analysis, anomaly identification, and remediation. Through analysis, the engine provides smart recommendations around identity access and role management.
The warehouse also ingests, contextualizes, and exchanges risk data across GRC and risk platforms, including CASB, SIEM, UEBA, and vulnerability management tools to examine risk across users, access, compliance, activity, and endpoints.
It’s time to debunk the fallacy that better security demands usability tradeoffs. EIC eliminates many IT burdens, while helping business users get necessary access via self-service features. Our “anytime-anywhere access experience” utilizes existing collaboration platforms and ITSM tools to streamline identity workflows.
EIC also supports tailored personas to dynamically grant (and revoke) access to varied user personas.
As the only enterprise-grade Identity Governance SaaS platform, EIC modernizes and simplifies identity security across industries and geographies. With EIC, enterprises of all sizes experience:
1 https://www.gartner.com/en/conferences/emea/security-risk-management-uae/featured-topics/identity-and-access-management
2 https://venturebeat.com/security/report-54-of-organizations-breached-through-3rd-parties-in-last-12-months/
About Saviynt
Saviynt is the leading identity governance platform built for the cloud. We help enterprise customers accelerate modern cloud initiatives and solve the toughest security and compliance challenges in record time. The Saviynt Enterprise Identity Cloud converges IGA, granular application access, cloud security, and privileged access into the industry’s only enterprise-grade SaaS solution.
