Future-Proof Your Security Investments with an Identity Data Fabric

Reading the news lately, it’s easy to see that businesses face a huge amount of cybersecurity risks. Hacks, breaches, data theft, stolen payment information, and ransomware all present major threats. Most businesses are aware of the risks they face and are willing to invest to address them. A 2021 report from Gartner says companies will spend $150 billion this year on tech-related security, a 12% increase from last year. Yet, businesses still face a huge secondary challenge: keeping all of these security investments working as intended, well into the future.

What companies need is a solution that does not depend on a specific configuration or technology architecture. An Identity Data Fabric—a key innovation from Radiant Logic—provides an always-on identity data unification layer, with room to accommodate each new investment or architecture shift as the company grows, evolves, and responds to ongoing changes. 

An Identity Data Fabric eliminates major hurdles for organizations with complex identity infrastructures built over time and successive waves of innovation.  By unifying identity across all sources, no matter the protocol, this foundational service helps companies be sure that the people accessing resources are who they say they are—not intruders looking for a free ride or hackers looking to compromise systems.

New Security Investments and Changes Can Break Existing IAM

We all know that digital technology is getting more complicated. Each new investment enlarges the tech ecosystem, creating new capabilities but also new potential security vulnerabilities. The rise of remote work and cloud-based service usage in the past couple years has brought these issues into sharper focus and highlighted the need for smart solutions that expand security in a fast and flexible manner—without creating yet another identity data silo. 

Businesses face additional challenges ensuring secure access for approved users—and approved users only. In many cases, each new tech investment can cause conflicts for existing identity data solutions and access management methods. This challenge is especially common after M&As, when two completely different architectures must somehow be woven together to allow appropriate access for stakeholders across the new entity.

Growing Use of Disciplines Creates IAM Complexity

On top of the challenges mentioned above, modern security architectures depend more and more upon an increasing number of cybersecurity disciplines. Identity governance (IGA) tools like Saviynt and privileged access (PAM) solutions like Beyond Trust all introduce new data requirements that must be accommodated. As complexity piles on top of complication, the promise of a simple, unified way to verify good users and reject bad ones drifts further out of reach.

Forcing users to log in a hundred different times a week to a hundred different services is not an option. Instead, businesses need a way to integrate the user experience and security mechanisms—and that starts by unifying identity data into a flexible, reusable identity data platform.

If identity data for multiple services sits in multiple repositories, the entire tech equation becomes increasingly challenging—and costly!—for IT to solve. Once more, they may end up relying on custom integrations or even more intermediary services just to make each piece of the architecture work as planned.

“Identity no longer refers to just people, increasingly, it’s also how things interrelate with other things, as well as people. All these context-rich relationships are the essence of digital transformation and enabling such a shift is all about creating an environment that’s responsive to change.” That’s what Radiant Logic wrote in a 2019 agile identity white paper drafted in collaboration with TechVision. It reflects the philosophy that the technology choices a business makes should free them up to focus on more possibilities, not constrain them by making security and IAM more difficult to maintain.

An Identity Data Fabric Adds Flexibility, Freeing Your Identity From Stack Solutions

The way forward for modern enterprises facing the challenges of complexity, cybersecurity risks, and constant change is to look to an identity service instead of a stack solution. Relying on RadiantOne puts the IAM work on one highly flexible pivot point. Organizations can unify all of their account profiles from dozens—even hundreds—of different services and platforms to establish one consistent identity throughout the organization. 

RadiantOne is also source-agnostic, bringing in identity data from stores all across the architecture with no need to manually connect each source through cumbersome custom coding. RadiantOne connects to data stores/services using a simple wizard-driven workflow and extracts metadata automatically, building a global data model and unifying identity into a logical source. It also synchronizes identity data stored on-prem, in the cloud, or in a hybrid manner across multiple architectures. Crucially, as new sources are added, they can be quickly included in the model, keeping user data exactly where it needs to be.

All identity data is gathered and unified into one single service that acts as an “Identity Data Fabric.” This fabric is made up of information gleaned from dozens (often hundreds or thousands) of fragmented identity sources to produce a consolidated view of each user. Through the power of virtualization, this unified view can be tailored to meet the needs of any IAM system or application, offering secure access to identity data in the precise format it requires, quickly and easily. This enables users to be authenticated, authorized, and ultimately have a seamless and secure experience across a number of systems—without costing the organization in terms of time and resources.  

It doesn’t matter how the identity data comes in or where it needs to be delivered, RadiantOne makes it fast and easy to establish a universally accessible global user profile enabling end users to securely gain access to the information and actions they need from each different service. This arrangement offers an incredibly high level of flexibility that does not need to be adjusted as new identity data repositories are created or new services are added.

Making IAM Work Simply and Seamlessly

Many tech investments can “lock in” enterprises. Once they purchase a solution, they feel forced to make certain decisions to justify that investment or to, yet again, rebuild their tech stack from the ground up to accommodate new needs. Even after all these efforts, massive holes in security can exist because of gaps in IAM’s abilities. Not great–and not necessary!

RadiantOne changes the game, allowing enterprises to make unconstrained decisions, choose the best technology solutions to meet their vision of the future–then stand up that solution quickly and securely so they get an immediate benefit for way less effort than the old gotta-hard-code-it way. After a major change, such as a huge digital transformation overhaul or an M&A, the business can avoid having to “rip and replace” just to make everything work again. Instead, access can be granted in a number of days, getting everyone back to work right away. The business can also complete big architecture projects, such as legacy directory modernization, on their own timeline and under budget using tools that sidestep common migration pitfalls. The possibilities are limitless!

Overall, an Identity Data Fabric doesn’t just make IT’s job easier—and less costly to the organization). It also gives organizations carte blanche to invest, without fear of being held back by their past decisions or their future ambitions. 

After all, transformative initiatives like moving to the cloud are all about blue skies and infinite possibilities. RadiantOne gives your whole team way less to worry about when they ask “what could the future hold for us?”