How do you implement a cloud access management solution? Follow these 4 easy steps.
Cloud apps in the enterprise 
have become mainstream, with 93% of organizations using cloud-based IT services. But moving to cloud-based applications can be challenging. Organizations tend to welcome cloud apps, for the savings they offer in terms of time-to-value and cost. However, they soon find themselves confounded by increasing management and usage complexities. Password fatigue, poor security, complex management, compliance risk and high helpdesk costs are some of the difficulties users and IT teams have to cope with when adopting cloud.
The good news is that IT leaders can streamline cloud adoption for everyone in the business with the help of cloud access management. Here’s how:
Step 1 – Use Single Sign on (SSO)
Single sign-on allows a user to authenticate once and get access to all their cloud applications, without having to log in separately to each app. Single Sign On can be tailored per role, so that different teams are authorized to access different resources. With role-based access policies, it is easy to provision, update and revoke access permissions when users join or leave the company or when they change roles within the organization.
SSO also makes IT’s life easier as they only need to maintain one identity per user, helping to eliminate password resets and the associated overhead of troubleshooting users from multiple administration consoles.
Step 2 – Protect Identities with Granular Access Policies
SSO enables maintaining a single identity per user for all cloud apps, but what happens if that single identity is ever compromised? To prevent this scenario, risk-based access policies can determine the right level of authentication for the right user at the right time, so that even after starting an SSO session, the appropriate access policy can still be enforced per app. Authentication can be transparent for low-risk apps, or require a step-up second factor in high risk situations, such as when logging in from an unknown network.
Step 3 – Optimize Access Policies with Data-driven Insights
IT visibility into which applications are accessed during the day, by which users, using what policy, allows administrators to fine-tune scenario-based access policies over time. Access policies can be relaxed or hardened to ensure a frictionless use experience.
Step 4 – Ensure Scalability of your Cloud Estate
When evaluating a prospective cloud access management service, ensure that you can scale and evolve your solution over time by easily adding new user groups and new cloud-based applications as the need arises.
SafeNet Trusted Access – The Smart Way to Manage Cloud Access
Ready to get started with implementing cloud access management in your organization? See how it’s done with the SafeNet Trusted Access Demo Video, or download the full 4 Steps to Cloud Access Management Guide Book and SafeNet Trusted Access Product Brief.
