What is Identity and Access Management (IAM)?

Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a governance model that determines who has access to what within the SaaS applications. It provides specific access to indicated resources to the right users while denying access to everyone else. This is important for safeguarding sensitive data and maintaining functionality or operational integrity in cloud environments.

Use passwords with the highest security standards, follow the principle of least privilege, conduct regular audits, and train your employees on security measures. It is also crucial to learn your SaaS provider’s IAM capability or strategy and align them with your overall security plan.

These include: 

• Shadow IT: Risks are minimized by employees using approved SaaS applications. Conduct an audit of your SaaS usage on a regular basis to solve any shadow IT problems.
• Data Visibility and Control: It’s difficult to determine where data resides and who has access to it in a SaaS environment. Put in place mechanisms for data loss prevention (DLP) to monitor and control data access.
• Third-Party Access: Control of access for vendors and partners has to be given special attention. It is recommended to have strong authentication measures in third-party accounts such as multi-factor authentication (MFA).\
• Scalability and Integration Complexity: As your organization expands and incorporates more SaaS applications, your IAM choice must expand and accommodate those applications. Use a centralized IAM solution to manage access across all your SaaS applications.

• Centralized IAM: Implement identity and access management in a centralized manner to control access for all your SaaS applications.
• Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Delegate rights for operations based on job descriptions to simplify access management.
• Federated Identity: Allow users to sign into multiple SaaS applications with the same credentials for security.
• Continuous Monitoring: Track your user’s activities and check for any irregularities to prevent possible security threats. 
• Incident Response Plan: Ensure you have a strategy in place to enable you to deal with security issues as they occur.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) techniques have been applied to analyze the user behavior and threat detection. Risk based authentication involves varying the amount of authentication that is required by the user depending on the risk level attached to the access request. 

Zero trust security model is a security model that operates under the principle that no user or device should be trusted and must be verified before being given access. Identity as a Service (IDaaS) is a cloud based IAM solution that helps IAM management of an organization.