What are the emerging standards and frameworks for IAM interoperability and integration?

An example is using analytics to optimize roles or access profiles for organizations in the company. IT delivery teams can use a “role optimizer” to build bundles of entitlement and groups in the application to build by application use cases. This way the changing of use cases throughout the application lifecycle can be documented through the analyzer.

Emerging standards for IAM interoperability? Just wing it and hope everything magically works together! Or, leverage identity and access analytics with OAuth, SAML, and OpenID Connect for seamless, secure integration. Need someone who actually gets this stuff? Call me on 07884666351 or email chris.holt@dclsearch.com

I group IAM Analytics into 3 categories and refine from there. Operational Metrics are the most common and the easiest to generate (e.g. transaction count in a month and volume trended over time). These are typically the least interesting to stakeholders outside the IAM program. Security Metrics are designed to measure the effectiveness of security controls within the IAM program and show how you meet Governance and Regulatory obligations. These often map back to a security policy or a security standard like NIST. Value Metrics are designed to quantify business value. They tie back to financial metrics directly or indirectly and are often derived using multiple data sources. These are usually the most interesting to your Stakeholders.

Some new standards making IAM easier to connect across systems include SCIM (helps automate user setups across tools), OIDC (makes single sign-on smoother), and FIDO2 (for secure, passwordless login). These are all about helping different IAM systems work together better, so it’s easier to manage identities in one place without needing complex setups. These standards keep things secure but also cut down on the hassle for both IT teams and users.

Emerging standards for IAM interoperability include Cross-domain Identity Management for user provisioning, SAML and OpenID Connect for authentication, and OAuth 2.0 for authorization.

Using analytics allows organizations to triangulate access data with other security tools to create a user risk profile based on past incidents. This allows for organizations to proactively use incident data with preventative control IAM data and make plans to reduce access risks.

As stated, there are many tools and techniques to collect, collate and generate metrics. But the number one factor that you must consider, no matter what tool you use, is that your metrics must tell a story to the reader. For example, if you show a line graph with provisioning tasks increasing month-over-month, is that good or bad? If your story is, work volume is increasing but there is no impact on staffing due to increased automation, then maybe your chart should be presented as a stacked bar showing manual provisioning + automated provisioning. This minor change can transform a chart that generates questions into a story that demonstrates operational effectiveness and increased return on IAM tool investments.

Most of the comments here mention standards that are strictly identity-centric (LDAP, SAML, SCIM, OIDC). Beyond identity, there's a new frontier: access control. That area comes with its own array of standards such as XACML (on the more mature side), Open Policy Agent (and Rego), ALFA, and Cedar. All of these are policy languages that can be used to express fine-grained access control requirements. For instance "doctors can view the medical records of patients they are assigned to". Other emerging standards such as OpenID AuthZEN, CAEP, and ALFA 2.0 are taking authorization to the next level.

Adopting standards like SAML, SCIM, and OpenID Connect is crucial in IAM for ensuring interoperability and enhancing security. SAML facilitates SSO and federated identity, improving user experience and security. SCIM uses RESTful APIs for efficient identity management across systems, while OpenID Connect, building on OAuth 2.0, supports authentication and consent management. My experience highlights the importance of these protocols in streamlining integration and securing data exchange. Their adoption not only simplifies system interactions but also aligns with best practices in security and governance, reinforcing the need for a standardized approach in the evolving IAM landscape.

Padrões de Federação: SAML, WS-Fed, OpenID Padrões de Autenticação: SAML, LDAP, RADIUS, OpenID Padrões de Autorização: OAuth2 que pode ser incrementado com padrões de controle de acesso como XACML, AuthZen e Open Policy Agent (OPA) Padrões de Provisionamento: SCIM, JIT

The framework described above is exactly what IAM practitioners are pointing to when we speak of zero trust. Remove the persistent account concepts and move to an environment where accounts spin up when needed and spin down when not in use.

IAM is a domain with a huge amount of data. But without proper interpretation and presentation all that data provides limited Information that can be used to drive business decisions, operational improvements and future investment. Sometimes less-is-more when it comes to presentation of the most important information that tells the right stories to drive the right decisions.

Analytics is important but using analytics to drive IAM processes like new applications onboarding to the IAM suite and giving SI teams wizards that help them figure out their next steps with IAM is the next level. Imagine that no privileges access exists without a valid change record or incident ticket or that roles are automatically created along with the application onboard.

Consider the growing importance of privacy regulations and their impact on IAM. Regulations like GDPR and CCPA place stricter requirements on how organizations manage and share identity data. Integrating privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), such as data anonymization and differential privacy, into your IAM systems can help ensure compliance while still allowing for robust identity analytics. Additionally, as IAM increasingly intersects with other domains like zero trust architectures and microservices security, staying informed on these cross-domain implications will be crucial for future-proofing your IAM strategy.