Organizations are rapidly adopting new technologies such as cloud, mobile and the Internet of Things (IoT) to facilitate and accelerate digital transformation. Securing these environments means managing identities throughout the organization, and next-generation identity and access management (IAM) strategies must give IT the ability to swiftly enable cloud, mobile and IoT adoption while providing a first-class user experience to employees and business partners alike.

Addressing Top Security Concerns

Security remains the top concern for chief information security officers (CISOs) and IT professionals. However, organizations are becoming more pragmatic in implementing their IAM strategies as a service. According to market research conducted by TechValidate and sponsored by IBM, security, cost and complexity, and integration with existing infrastructure are the top three concerns among IT professionals:

This viewpoint mirrors the feedback I often receive from clients. Recently, a client in Europe told me that “cloud is good for cloud, but it is not good for on-prem.” Businesses need a cloud-based identity and access management-as-a-service (IDaaS) solution to secure cloud apps with minimal effort and cost while preserving the investment already made in their on-premises IAM infrastructures.

On-demand Webinar: New IBM Cloud Identity Connect, IDaaS for the Hybrid Enterprise

Infusing Identity Everywhere

I’m pleased to announce the newest IBM offerings in our identity and access management portfolio: IBM Cloud Identity Connect and MaaS360 with Cloud Identity. IBM Cloud Identity offerings are delivered as a service to empower your digital workforce with seamless access to applications across the hybrid enterprise.

Customers have made it clear that to address the top concerns associated with migrating to the cloud, a solution must be easily consumable, standards-based and easy to integrate with existing IT infrastructure and services. Cloud Identity Connect, our born-in-the-cloud IDaaS offering, steps up to the challenge in each area.

Based on microservices architecture, Cloud Identity Connect is easily consumable for integration with cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, but also provides employee access management for on-premises applications as well. For example, IBM customers who are already using IBM Security Access Manager for web access management or MaaS360 for mobile security can activate Cloud Identity with a single click, straight from their existing product implementation.

Additionally, by using open standards such as security assertion markup language (SAML) and OpenID Connect for securing user access to cloud and on-premises applications, Cloud Identity Connect is built to support the authentication and access management needs of today and tomorrow.

A Seamless, Streamlined Digital Transformation

In the same research conducted above, users outlined four very important capabilities that IBM Cloud Identity Connect addresses:

Cloud Identity Connect delivers single sign-on (SSO) for applications, whether they are on-premises or in the cloud, by extending existing on-premises access management installations. This can be synchronized within end-user mobility management solutions, allowing new cloud services to be rolled out in minutes rather than days or weeks.

The TechValidate survey also found that it takes 79 percent of organizations more than a day to integrate web-centric business applications into their existing on-premises IAM solutions.

Cloud-based IDaaS solutions provide faster time to value, scalability and lower operational costs. Next-generation cloud IAM capabilities can come in the form of application program interfaces (APIs), self-service SaaS solutions or fully managed IAM environments hosted in the cloud.

IBM Security is pleased to be the single vendor in the market providing this level of breadth and scale with on-premises, managed and SaaS IAM offerings. This is how IBM enables your digital transformation by infusing identity everywhere.

On-demand Webinar: New IBM Cloud Identity Connect, IDaaS for the Hybrid Enterprise