IAM implementation: Key steps and tips to follow

According to the CrowdStrike global threat report, identity-based breaches contribute to 80% of all cyberattacks. Thus, security specialists increasingly implement identity and access management (IAM) solutions to protect their digital landscape. However, IAM implementation poses some challenges, leading many businesses to seek guidance from cybersecurity consultants. So, how to choose and implement IAM? And how to smooth your adoption journey? Let's find the answers.

Key elements of identity and access management:

Identity and access management includes tools, processes, and policies that ensure users have appropriate access to company assets. It enables security teams to manage and monitor access control across the organization, detect anomalies, and safeguard assets from internal and external threats.

The IAM system consists of four key elements:

• Authentication: Enables users to provide credentials for initial access, creating a session that remains active until logged off or timed out.
• Authorization: Determines if a user can access specific resources based on stored policies.
• User management: Handles administrative tasks like creating and maintaining user identities, passwords, roles, and user provisioning.
• Directory services: Helps manage identity data across applications by aggregating or consolidating information in real time.

6 key steps for successful IAM implementation

Following a thorough IAM implementation project plan will help you effectively employ and manage your identity and access controls. Here are six crucial steps on your road to adopting IAM:

1. Evaluate your current infrastructure

In the initial phase of the IAM implementation plan, it's essential to conduct an in-depth analysis of your digital infrastructure. It provides valuable insights into the complexities of devices, network architecture, policies, and regulatory requirements. Our team of security experts usually starts by performing a detailed inventory review.

Firstly, we examine the applications used across the organization, understanding their functions and roles. This evaluation helps identify potential security gaps and clarify the specific security needs for each application. Then, it is crucial to assess the internal architecture and network infrastructure that support the company's operations. Understanding the layout, connection points, and possible vulnerabilities will help you develop strategies to strengthen your organization's security posture.

2. Design a comprehensive IAM strategy

The IAM implementation requires designing a well-defined strategy and setting measurable goals. Identity and access management objectives often include achieving regulatory compliance, minimizing data breach risks, or enhancing user productivity. Clearly defining these goals allows you to prioritize IAM initiatives and concentrate on the features that will provide the most significant impact.

For a successful rollout, it's crucial to align IAM goals with your business objectives and define a comprehensive deployment plan. This includes gathering requirements, understanding dependencies, setting security metrics and policies, and establishing milestones. A timeline should also be established for training employees to ensure they are well-prepared to utilize the system.

3. Create efficient IAM policies

Having your objectives defined and inventory reviewed, it is time to create IAM policies and procedures tailored to your business needs. These policies should align closely with industry standards and company goals, covering essential aspects such as user access, password requirements, control measures, and user provisioning and de-provisioning protocols.

To set the necessary policies, you should partner with an experienced cybersecurity consultant to leverage its expertise and select the most effective ones for your needs. Also, documenting and sharing these policies with key stakeholders ensures they are consistently reviewed, updated, and reflect the most useful IAM practices.

4. Choose the right IAM solution for your organization

IAM solution must align with your company's requirements, policies, and objectives. This often involves selecting the most effective digital tools for identity and authentication management to safeguard your systems, resources, and data from unauthorized access.

While evaluating different IAM solutions and choosing the right one for your organization, we suggest paying attention to the following:

• Features and functionality: Ensure the solution offers essential features like MFA, SSO, and comprehensive user lifecycle management.
• Integration capabilities: The IAM tool should integrate seamlessly with your existing applications and IT infrastructure.
• Compliance: Confirm that the solution meets data privacy laws and industry security standards.
• Scalability: Select the solution that can adapt to a growing user base and evolving security needs.
• Usability and manageability: Assess how intuitive the tool is for administrators and end users.
• The total cost of ownership: Compare different pricing models, such as subscription-based or perpetual licenses, and account for implementation and maintenance costs.

5. Implement in phases

The implementation stage involves all tasks required to build and configure the final system. This includes data center setup, OS configuration, software installation, customization, data loading, and creating administrative interfaces-all steps to achieve the end-state solution.

The IAM implementation also goes closely with testing, as defects identified during testing may require updates to the process. Multiple iterations between the stages before finalizing the solution will ensure better production deployment.

6. Continuously refine and enhance the IAM solution

The journey doesn't end with IAM implementation. After rolling out the solution, our security experts recommend establishing a plan for ongoing analysis and improvement, as well as regularly reviewing system logs, user access patterns, and any security incidents to identify potential vulnerabilities. It is crucial to stay current with security best practices and industry and regulatory requirements to ensure compliance. You should also conduct regular security audits and penetration testing to validate the system's effectiveness.

To ensure effective ongoing support with the IAM system, you can partner with a security consultant. A team of experienced cybersecurity professionals will help you stay updated with modern security practices, adding new features and scaling the solution due to your business needs.

Read more: Top 12 identity and access management consulting companies

Useful tips for IAM implementation

To help you smooth an IAM implementation process, we asked our security operations team to share valuable tips to avoid common mistakes. These five hints will ease your journey:

1. Start with a pilot project. Begin with a small-scale implementation to test the IAM solution before a full rollout. This approach will allow you to identify and resolve potential issues early on.
2. Engage stakeholders. Involve key stakeholders-IT staff, department heads, legal teams, and end users-throughout the implementation to ensure their support and alignment.
3. Establish a governance framework. Create a governance framework outlining roles, responsibilities, policies, procedures, and guidelines for the ongoing management and administration of the IAM system.
4. Provide employee training. Train both IT personnel and end users on new processes and tools to ensure they understand and can securely operate the IAM system.
5. Leverage automation to review access and identity policies. Conduct regular access reviews to ensure users maintain only the minimum access they need. Use automated workflows to streamline access updates, enhancing security and efficiency.

Enhance identity and access management with N-iX

If you are looking for an experienced security partner for your IAM implementation, N-iX is here to help you. Our IAM experts specialize in user identity management, access control, authentication and authorization, role management, single sign-on, policy enforcement, and more. With over 100 successfully delivered security projects, our security professionals have extensive experience conducting security assessments, penetration testing, providing security awareness training, and more to help you design your unique identity and access management implementation plan, deploy, and support it afterward.

With 21 years in the international market and compliance with multiple cybersecurity standards like CyberGRX, ISO 9001:2008, ISO 27001, ISO/IEC 27701:2019, PCI DSS, and FSQS, N-iX is a reliable partner to ensure your continuous access control and protect your organization.