Amid the telework trend, the end user entity should have a set of identity management guidelines in place to ensure the company’s network and data security.
Due to the ravage of covid-19, many companies have asked staff and employees to work from home. Amid this trend, the end user entity should have a set of identity management guidelines in place to ensure the company’s network and data security.
Since covid-19 was first reported, it has become a global pandemic. By the time of this article’s publication, the disease has infected over 13 million worldwide. Over 580,000 have died from it.
The disease has forced many businesses, such as shops and restaurants, to shut down. For enterprises and offices, in order to maintain the safety of employees, they have asked them to work from home. Indeed, teleworking is not something new, but has seen a rise due to the pandemic.
Having most, if not all, of the company’s staff work from home inevitably brings various challenges for the IT department. One of the biggest challenges is identity management. With the company’s IT infrastructure and sensitive data at stake, making sure that the right person is coming into the network with the right access level has become more important than ever. That said, there are a few identity management tips that can ensure that telework can go on safely, while providing staff with a great telework user experience.
Single sign-on
Needless to say, in an enterprise or office setting, staff work with different applications and subsystems; signing on to each of them with a different password may be troublesome. Further, being locked out after entering the wrong password can also be frustrating. Thus, having a single sign-on solution may be ideal. “This is especially helpful with remote work, where the employees cannot reach out to the IT team as quickly, and IT cannot track each application,” said a post by Ilantus Technologies. "With single sign-on, employees can log in just once, with a set of credentials. This means that every time a user tries to use one application, he/she must know the master credential, securing all the applications."
Authentication
One of the key parts of identity management for teleworking is authentication. For most companies, they use the single-factor method in the form of password, which can be easily stolen or obtained.
That said, it would be better for companies to
adopt a two-factor authentication (2FA) method. According to HID Global, one of the easiest ways to deploy 2FA is to send a push notification to the user’s mobile device after the first password log in.
Taking a step further, the end user may even consider multifactor-factor authentication to make entering the network even more secure.“By integrating an advanced authentication platform, you can leverage your existing 2FA factors while
adding more human-friendly authentication factors such as smartcards, biometrics, UBA (a.k.a. behavioral) and risk analytics,” HID Global said. “Look for a solution that will not break the bank. It needs to be fast to deploy, seamlessly fit into your Active Directory domain, require minimal computing power and be available on a scalable subscription basis.”
BYOD
It should also be noted that for many remote workers, they use their own device to do the work. How to facilitate this, then, is also important. “With modern access management capabilities, organizations can easily define different user journeys for access by device. This is done by capturing device-specific context such as IP address, localization, browser agent, and device characteristics,” said Forge Rock in a post. “By capturing this rich data set and then using it to make runtime access decisions, organizations can configure flexible yet secure journeys that prompts the user to authenticate, re-authenticate with a second factor, or completely deny access when appropriate.”