An Explanation of Identity and Access Management

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For businesses not already implementing identity and access management, 2026 will be the year they likely have to do so, particularly with remote work and the growing cyber threat landscape.

Identity and access management, or IAM, ensures that your people have access to all the resources they need to get their jobs done while keeping those assets and resources secure.

The Challenge for IT Teams

For an IT department, user access control is one of the most critical responsibilities. This responsibility becomes complex because it has to be balanced with security, productivity, and efficiency. Your goal is to give users simplified access to IT resources without compromising security. An easy way to do this is to audit user rights to internal systems so you can easily and efficiently practice role-based access control.

The following explains what identity and access management are separately and together, along with the current business implications.

A Basic Overview

Gartner describes IAM as a security discipline ensuring the right individuals have the required access to the right resources at the right time, specifying they need this access for the right reasons.

Authorized individuals—and only those users—should have access to certain resources. IAM is broad and encompasses the technology you use to manage access and policies. The technology and policies guide identification, authorization, and authentication for people, groups of people, and software applications.

When you have an identity management system in place, it prevents unauthorized access to your resources and systems, helping stop data exfiltration. IAM should also flag attempted access by unauthorized programs or users, whether these occur from within or outside the perimeter.

Identity management is sometimes used interchangeably with identity and access management, but it is only part of the broader discipline.

The broad term of IAM covers not only who is accessing resources but also what resources they are accessing. Identity management, by distinction, focuses on who is accessing the resources rather than what they are accessing.

Why Is IAM Important?

IAM streamlines the systems and processes for IT admins to assign digital identities to an entity, authenticate them at login, and authorize them to access certain resources. It also facilitates monitoring and management of resources throughout their lifecycle.

IAM stands between users and the assets that are critical to them, serving as an important layer of protection against compromised credentials and stolen passwords—among the most frequent entry points for hackers seeking to steal data or deploy ransomware.

When implemented well, IAM enables frictionless functioning of your digital systems and helps promote productivity.

Your employees can work easily from anywhere while you maintain centralized visibility and management, ensuring they only access what they need to do their jobs.

IAM is not only for employees. Organizations increasingly need to provide secure access for business partners, contractors, remote and mobile users, and clients. Due to digital transformation, identities are now assigned to Internet of Things devices, APIs, and robots. The hybrid multi-cloud environment further complicates access needs and requires IAM solutions that keep pace with today’s dynamic landscape.

In short, you need IAM for a combination of security and productivity. Passwords are often the primary point of failure in traditional security. If a user’s password is breached, your organization becomes vulnerable to attack. With IAM, you reduce single points of failure and add tools to catch mistakes before damage escalates.

From a productivity standpoint, once employees log into your primary IAM portal, they no longer need to manage multiple passwords or access levels. Every employee receives tailored access to the tools required for their role, simplifying workflows and reducing the workload on IT teams.

What Are the Components of IAM?

Some of the elements and components of IAM include:

• Users: An IAM user is an identity linked to a credential and the permissions associated with that credential. This might be a person, but a user can also be an application. With IAM, you can create usernames for each employee in an organization. Each IAM user may be associated with only one account, and a newly created user would not be authorized to perform any actions.
• Groups: A collection of users forms a group, allowing you to apply permissions to multiple users at once.
• Policies: The policies underlying IAM define permissions and control access to resources. They specify who can access what and the actions they can take.
• Roles: A role is a set of permissions that define the allowed and denied actions for an entity.

Features of IAM include:

• Shared access to an account with separate usernames and passwords
• Granular levels of permission
• Multi-factor authentication—this is supported by IAM. With MFA, users provide their username and password plus another element, such as a one-time password generated on their phone, as an additional factor for authentication.

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Comparing Identity Management and Access Management

We briefly touched on this above, but when exploring IAM it is important to distinguish between identity management and access management since they are often grouped together.

A digital identity contains the attributes and information defining a role. Identity management is a means of tracking and managing all changes to the attributes and entities that define an identity centrally. These changes can usually only be made by a limited number of people within an organization.

Access management involves authenticating these identities once they are created. Access management occurs when an identity requests access to a certain resource, after which decisions are made about whether that access is granted.

Sometimes access management is tiered. Finally, authentication is not the same as authorization. A user might be authorized to be on a corporate network, but that does not automatically mean the identity can access anything throughout the enterprise. The identity attributes determine whether authorization is granted to specific assets or applications.

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