How can you design an effective IAM program?

An effective journey in IAM starts with a Strategy and for that, it is important to assess your nature of business, compliance and regulatory standards you are supposed to fulfill, understand the need of IAM requirements for your business and then create a robust strategy for it. IAM is a vast ocean and every organization doesn't need it completely, depending on your nature of business, it is possible that 20-30% of IAM controls can keep you 100% compliant and can run your show. This is how a clear defined strategy can help you to stay focused, cost effective, and productive at the meantime.

As I'm learning more about Identity and Access Management (IAM), it becomes evident that stakeholders must grasp that IAM is the necessary foundation for securing organizations' digital resources. This concept should be embraced before embarking on IAM design and strategy. Also, It should be emphasized that IAM design should be embedded in the Zero Trust strategy. Hopefully, this approach helps with the buy-in across the C-Suite. Alongside this, what should also be taken into account: * Organizational Cultural Adoption * Compatibility with Legacy Solutions * Contingencies Planning * Authentication of Non-Human Sources * Training and Supporting Users issues, they must learn IAM policies and processes that apply to their roles.

Designing an effective Identity and Access Management (IAM) program is crucial for ensuring the security and integrity of an organization's digital assets. A clear understanding of the business context helps tailor the IAM program to meet specific needs.

When designing architecture and role hierarchies, it is important to remember that the fundamental principle should be the Principle of Least Privilege

Once you have a defined strategy, objective and Roadmap from the leadership. The second step is to lay- down those objectives and prioritize them. A Matrix based evaluation helps to define the priority, relevance, along with the current state and target state. Now, if you are starting your IAM journey from scratch. It will follow 3 phases: 1) IAM 1.0: Assumed Trust phase 2) IAM 2.0: Zero Trust Phase 3) IAM 3.0: Adaptive intelligence with inclusion of Generative AI There is nothing like a big bang theory in IAM journey.

Introducing and designing an IAM architecture is a very crucial stage. Because, the aim is not only to define a robust security architecture in place but to also align it with overarching enterprise architecture. The IAM architecture should compliment the Enterprise architecture and should be able to bring value at strategy, business, application, and technology layer. At processes part, IAM processes should be smarter, simpler and effective. Because, a smarter IAM process is always focused to make lives easier with an inclusion of robust security and should have a flavour of CIA triad at each step.

Define use cases for a proof of concept (PoC) which covers one or two of your most important use cases. If possible, evaluate vendors based on this PoC rather than feature mapping and presentation. Real life use cases in IAM are always unique for each organisation. It might be a case of using more than one tool or a combination or tools and processes.

This is a comprehensive one and I agree that IAM is a journey and should be implementedin a phased approach. In additionto that, you should have a continuous evaluation mechanism in place after implementation of of IAM program at each stage. A continuous validation and evaluation of your IAM program will not only help you to make your processes optimized but also gives you insights on cost optimization through automation.

The most important part of implementing the IAM program which is typically ignored is to understand "What is needed ?" or "What the stakeholder wants?" When an organization starts working on IAM vision and strategy, they should consult internal stakeholders and try to find out what is best for the organization, rather than looking out and implementing a strategy based on "Others" experience and learning. The solution designed, implemented, and successful for an organization may not be successful in your organization. Since IAM deals with end users, the human factor becomes crucial. The best IAM implementation can make your organization safe like a fortress however it may not be user-friendly. Ignoring "Human" touch can hurt in CIAM.

Governance is a key in any IAM program. As I mentioned earlier, Continous Validation and evaluation through a well-defined governance model is very important to ensure that you remain effective against emerging cyber threats, efficient in your Processes and relevant to your enterprise growing needs in IAM.

Create a governance structure with clear roles and responsibilities for IAM. This includes appointing an IAM manager or leader who can oversee the program.

Define reasonable timelines to achieve IAM program objectives. Architecture and Product Owner should be in sync in defining these so that the implementers are not burdened and missing use cases and resulting in oversights. In every IAM program that I have worked, I am yet to find a reasonable timeframe for implementation. This has resulted in rework, production issues, shutting down of the IAM program and many other incidents. Be realistic and push back where the timelines are an issue.