When you unify a complex technology landscape that consists of diverse deployments—including on-premises, legacy systems, multi-cloud and hybrid environments—you inevitably create a tangled web of identities, each with its own set of security challenges.
Identity and access management (IAM) as we know it struggles to keep up. It becomes increasingly complex to manage user access across disparate systems, to maintain consistent security policies and to meet compliance regulations. Enter The One Identity Fabric – a modern approach to IAM that provides a unified approach to manage and secure identities across systems and applications.
One Identity Fabric offers a unified and comprehensive approach to IAM that empowers organizations to overcome these challenges. In this article, we explore the concept of an identity fabric, its key benefits for IAM security and how the One Identity Fabric provides a unified solution for organizations.
Identity fabric in context
IAM has undergone a significant transformation over the years. Traditional IAM solutions focus on on-premises environments, where managing user access within a single domain is relatively straightforward.
However, the rise of cloud computing, mobile devices and IoT has dramatically changed the IAM landscape.
Today, organizations often operate complex hybrid and multi-cloud environments, with users accessing resources from a variety of locations and devices. This creates new challenges for IAM: Fragmented identities, inconsistent security policies and increased complexity.
Solutions originally designed for complex, on-premises environments are still commonly used to manage identities within such environments but are ill-equipped to handle growing governance and visibility challenges.
An identity fabric Is built to handle complexity
An identity fabric represents a natural evolution of IAM aimed toward addressing the complexities of identities across modern IT environments. Unlike traditional IAM, which focuses on managing identities within individual systems, an identity fabric provides a unified approach that ties together the identities used across all systems and applications.
This enables centralized control, streamlined processes and enhanced security across the entire organization. Key differences between traditional IAM and identity fabric approaches include:
- Scope: Traditional IAM focuses on individual systems, while an identity fabric encompasses the entire IT environment.
- Architecture: Standard IAM is often monolithic in nature, while an identity fabric is modular and unified.
- Integration: IAM often relies on point-to-point integrations, while an identity fabric is streamlined, with more consistent integration across applications.
- Security: Perimeter security is the main objective for many IAM tools, but an identity fabric adopts a Zero Trust approach.
So, in many ways, the identity fabric approach overcomes the limitations of traditional IAM within a modern technology environment – and offers a more secure, agile and efficient identity management strategy.
It’s worth noting that converged identity and identity fabric describe the same concept of unifying disparate identity systems, though "converged identity" is sometimes used for specific vendor products, while "identity fabric" more often refers to the overarching architectural approach.
The identity fabric explained
Think of identity fabric as a tapestry connecting all your different identity systems – on-premises, cloud-based or hybrid – into a cohesive view.
This "fabric" enables seamless and secure access to resources while simplifying identity management for administrators. An identity fabric includes several core components:
- Distributed identity management: Distributed identity management improves scalability and resilience, allowing the system to adapt to changing needs and to withstand failures. It is a network of interconnected hubs, each managing a portion of the identities rather than a single point of failure.
- Abstraction layer: When using an identity fabric, the abstraction layer acts as an intermediary between applications and identity providers. It allows applications to connect to the fabric without needing to know the specifics of each identity system. This simplifies integration and enables greater flexibility.
- Orchestration: An identity fabric orchestrates various identity-related processes, such as authentication, authorization and provisioning – all at an overarching level. The automation streamlines workflows, reduces manual effort and ensures consistent enforcement of policies.
- Zero-Code: Integrating new applications and systems into the fabric is made easy with zero-code connectors. This eliminates the need for complex custom coding, saving time and resources.
The identity fabric also automatically discovers and maps existing identity systems and applications within the IT environment. This provides a comprehensive view of the identity landscape and helps identify potential security gaps.
By unifying these components, an identity fabric essentially creates a unified identity ecosystem that simplifies user access while enhancing security.
Benefits of an identity fabric
An identity fabric significantly strengthens an organization's security posture by addressing the inherent complexities and vulnerabilities in modern IT environments.
Identity fabric provides a deeper visibility for managing all identities and access rights across an organization. This centralized control and visibility enables security teams to easily monitor activity, enforce policies and respond to threats.
By connecting disparate systems, an identity fabric eliminates the fragmentation and silos that often plague traditional IAM. This ensures consistent security policies and reduces the risk of vulnerabilities slipping through the cracks.
Furthermore, it provides the ability to integrate new technologies and adapt to changing business needs. This agility is crucial in a complex, dynamic technology environment, where both threats and opportunities constantly emerge.
Finally, an identity fabric can significantly reduce IAM costs through automation. With zero-code integration and automated discovery, deploying an identity fabric is faster and easier than implementing traditional IAM solutions.
The One Identity Fabric
The One Identity Fabric empowers organizations to unify their identity tools, bolster security and streamline operations. It effectively addresses modern identity challenges by consolidating identity data to provide a single source of truth and eliminate fragmentation.
What’s more, the One Identity Fabric enables fluid integration across a diverse array of systems, applications and devices, providing connectivity across on-premises, cloud and hybrid environments.
It gives you the flexibility to maximize existing investments while securely adapting new technologies to meet evolving business needs. Whether it's integrating with a new cloud service provider or accommodating the latest mobile devices, the One Identity Fabric ensures a smooth and secure transition.
The One Identity Fabric also helps organizations meet regulatory compliance requirements by providing comprehensive audit trails, centralized policy management and support for industry standards.
Beyond these core strengths, the One Identity Fabric also offers:
- Broad scope and capability: We are one of the few vendors offering comprehensive solutions for identity governance and administration (IGA), access management and privileged access management (PAM) use cases.
- Cutting-edge IGA capabilities: The IGA capabilities of One Identity Fabric are built on extensive experience and a strong track record, providing robust identity lifecycle management, access certification and compliance reporting.
- Advanced adaptive access management: One Identity Fabric applies advanced features such as single sign-on, multi-factor authentication and behavioral analysis across all applications enrolled in the identity fabric.
The One Identity Fabric is not a static solution but rather a dynamic approach. We already support non-human identities, extending identity management to robotic process automation (RPA) bots and IoT devices. We recognize that in today's interconnected world, security must encompass all entities, not just human users.
Real-world examples
The effectiveness of One Identity Fabric is substantiated by our customer success stories.
For instance, a leading financial institution leveraged One Identity Fabric to streamline user access for its employees and customers across multiple channels, including online banking, mobile apps and ATMs. This resulted in improved security, reduced operational costs and enhanced customer satisfaction.
In another case, a global healthcare provider used One Identity Fabric to secure access to sensitive patient data across its distributed network of hospitals and clinics, improving compliance, minimizing data breach risks and enhancing patient privacy.
These real-world examples underscore how One Identity Fabric empowers organizations across diverse industries to achieve their identity security goals, improve operational efficiency and enhance user experience.
Identity fabric and cybersecurity posture
Complex IT, characterized by hybrid and multi-cloud environments, can overwhelm traditional IAM solutions, leading to increased cybersecurity risk. You need a modern approach to identity security that can unify fragmented systems, streamline processes and enhance security posture.
An identity fabric is the cornerstone. By providing a centralized approach for managing and securing identities across all applications and systems, an identity fabric empowers organizations to overcome the limitations of traditional IAM. It enables centralized control, reduces complexity, improves agility and elevates security, all while streamlining operations and reducing costs.
The One Identity Fabric stands out as a comprehensive and robust IAM solution that aligns with the modern complexity of IAM.
To learn more about how One Identity Fabric can benefit your organization, visit our website, or contact our team of experts to discover how One Identity can help you navigate the modern complexities of identity security.
