RadiantOne Simplifies Complex IAM Architectures

RadiantOne Simplifies Complex Architectures & Sets the Stage for Successful IAM Initiatives

The IT landscape is continuously growing. Businesses continue to migrate their operations over to the cloud, resulting in many cloud-based and hybrid environments. And while the cloud delivers many benefits, the complex IT infrastructure resulting from digital transformation can be a breeding ground for security threats.

Today, companies have adopted a hybrid-work approach, employees rely on a mix of on-prem and cloud-based apps and services to complete their work, whether that’s remotely or in a physical office. IT teams are challenged to meet this new hybrid access requirement: disparate IT systems make it difficult for teams to extend access to users to the information they need, when they need it, resulting in productivity loss.

The answer you need to solve these complex security and access challenges lies within your identity data, and the attributes that make up what the organization knows about each user. Effectively managing your identity data can result in friction-free access and granular control over identities for improved IT security, and enhanced productivity.

How can you effectively manage your identity data? By implementing a successful Identity and Access Management (IAM) system within your organization.

The Consequences of Complex IAM Architectures

Unfortunately, implementing IAM within your organization can be a challenge, especially in complex, hybrid environments. In a recent report by TechVision Research, this challenge was further illustrated:

“Today, we find ourselves with a largely mixed set of IAM capabilities residing on-premises, in the cloud, or both. Adding to this complexity for many organizations is that they may be using multiple Identity as a Service (IDaaS) offerings, may have multiple on-premise IAM systems, and may be leveraging multiple cloud service providers.”

This complexity leads to many often-unseen consequences, including subpar security, reduced operational efficiency, and a lackluster customer experience.

1. Subpar Security

Complex IAM architectures result in a lack of granular control over identity data and consequently, lack of control over access. IT or identity teams find it nearly impossible to gain an in-depth view of who has access to what–or build a better system for determining access. This lack of control leads to increased risk of breach.

This also affects and slows the implementation of additional security measures such as Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). Many environments include legacy applications that may not support modern protocols, and subsequently aren’t able to easily add enhanced security mechanisms such as MFA easily. And with new regulations and policies requiring it, choosing to not implement MFA isn’t an option.

2. Reduced Operational Efficiency

Digital access is critical for the modern enterprise–from simply opening Google Docs to draft meeting notes to accessing the CRM to support customers, everything users must do relies on the smooth extension of access. Anything (such as a difficult-to-navigate identity system) that delays seamless, secure access to resources slows down productivity.

Unfortunately, complex environments can lead to users needing to log into every single tool individually. This leads to proliferation of passwords, and wasted time both by end users and the IT team who must help them. The result? Productivity loss that can directly impact your bottom line.

3. Lackluster Customer Experience

Access issues don’t just affect your employees and IT teams. It also directly impacts your customers—and their digital experience with your organization is paramount to gaining and retaining loyal customers.

One example is the call center. Customers typically call in after exhausting all of the other support methods. Unfortunately, fragmented systems lead to long wait times while incomplete views of customer identity data lead to friction during support calls. We’ve gone into more detail on the customer experience on other blogs—read more to go from “hold please” to “glad I could help!” with unified customer identity data.

A single, subpar experience can result in your customers going elsewhere. And that’s something no business can afford.

The Solution: An Abstraction Layer to Reduce Complexity

Complex IAM architectures benefit from unification of identity data to address the above challenges. The best way to unify disparate identity data is with a layer capable of buffering consuming applications from the complexity of underlying systems—to speed up deployment and realize faster time to value on identity-based projects such as Single Sign-On (SSO), Identity Governance and Administration (IGA), and more.

An abstraction layer works as a “middleman” or universal translator between disparate applications and identity sources. This layer maps disparate identity sources into a single, unified view for simplified management and access to identity data, making your environment much easier to navigate and helping you harness its value across a variety of initiatives.

The RadiantOne Intelligent Identity Data Platform: An Abstraction Layer for Streamlining IAM

RadiantOne provides an abstraction layer that virtualizes disparate, heterogeneous data silos into a single access point to make identity data a central, reusable asset for the entire organization.

RadiantOne helps organizations build their Identity Data Fabric, integrating identities across all data sources into unified views. From there, consuming applications have a single interface to access for gaining the identity data they need.

RadiantOne sits between client applications and the backend systems, acting as a universal connector and shielding consumers from the complexity of the identity environment. It extracts the schemas from underlying sources, builds a global data model across sources, and presents the unified, translated information to client applications.

Enabling Infinite Expansion & Revision

As TechVision writes, RadiantOne “provides the ability to map common or disparate identity sources into a unified view and to provide authentication, authorization, and federation support.”

A key benefit of using RadiantOne is flexibility. Whatever format the data is in on the underlying source, can be remapped and remodeled to meet different application or initiative requirements.

This one, unified identity data platform can meet the needs of various identity data services as your needs change. For example, as additional data sources need to be folded in, RadiantOne can easily plug those into the system, and as new applications and their unique requirements are onboarded, their needs are easily accommodated as well–enabling infinite expansion.

Learn More About Successful Identity & Access Management in Complex and Hybrid Environments

By simplifying complex IAM architectures, unifying disparate data sources, and enabling flexibility, RadiantOne sets the stage for successful IAM initiatives. To learn more about RadiantOne, check out our webinar, How to Thrive in a Hybrid World: Managing Identities for the Here and Now.

If you have questions or want to test drive RadiantOne in your business, reach out to us today.