Digital transformation. We hear it mentioned all the time as organizations look to what’s next for their technology strategies. Generally speaking, it refers to digitizing business processes to more efficiently solve business problems and more effectively serve customers through online channels. But what does that actually entail?
Moving to the cloud is typically a key component of this transformation, and companies are rapidly shifting in that direction. In fact, Gartner found that this year, more than 45% of IT spending on system infrastructure, infrastructure software, application software, and business process outsourcing will shift from traditional solutions to cloud.
For many organizations, moving to the cloud actually means moving to multiple clouds. A hybrid cloud infrastructure is often chosen because it provides organizations with ultimate flexibility, cost efficiency, and agility. But a hybrid cloud approach can also create security vulnerabilities if it’s not carefully architected.
According to the 2020 Verizon Data Breach Incident Report, misconfiguration of cloud services is the second largest cause of breaches, eclipsed only by hacking. MGM Resorts’ breach in 2020 was the result of unauthorized access to a cloud server and resulted in leaked account information for upwards of 10 million users.
While cloud migration does alter the threat landscape, security vulnerabilities aren’t a foregone conclusion. With more entry points available to users and bad actors, organizations are finding better identity and authentication approaches to enhance security. This is where identity and access management (IAM) steps in to protect access to resources hosted and managed across hybrid cloud environments.
What Is Hybrid Cloud?
Hybrid cloud combines public cloud workloads and infrastructure with on-premises workloads and infrastructure, enabling organizations to leverage the optimal mix of each deployment model.
A hybrid cloud strategy gives organizations greater flexibility by balancing workloads between cloud and on premises as IT needs shift and costs fluctuate. This gives companies more options and control over their private data. For example, an organization can host its sensitive data in a private cloud or in its on-premises data center while leveraging the robust computational resources of the public cloud. Hybrid cloud solutions often provide a single place to manage and configure capabilities across domains to simplify administration.
Hybrid Cloud and Secure Digital Access Go Hand in Hand
Digital identity’s central function is to provide users with the right level of access to the right resources in the right context. An authentication authority is how businesses keep access secure across hybrid cloud environments. Its capabilities include single sign-on (SSO) and multifactor authentication (MFA), which improve security and increase the productivity of employees, customers, and partners.
For employees, cloud SSO reduces the number of passwords in use, which in turn reduces the costs of password resets and increases employee productivity. On the customer front, IAM provides the capabilities to increase customer loyalty and satisfaction through improved experiences such as unified profiles and passwordless login.
When an organization deploys a hybrid cloud strategy, IAM becomes even more integral. As resources become distributed among several clouds and on-premises data centers, the ability to identify users and grant them the right level of access to the right things at the right time is critical to the organization’s security posture. This distributed model creates flexibility and agility for IT but can also lead to security vulnerabilities if it’s not architected properly.
This is where hybrid cloud IAM comes in. An authentication authority plays a critical security role in hybrid cloud, enabling employers to integrate and provide IAM regardless of where their resources and identities are hosted, whether on premises in a personal data center, in a partner cloud, or among several public clouds.
The decision of where and how to deploy an authentication authority comes down to ensuring alignment between IT and business requirements. This alignment can be achieved through hybrid cloud IAM for companies of multiple sizes, from SMBs to large global enterprises, with a range of identity needs. There are two instances in particular where this is especially important:
Organizations that must comply with regulatory requirements. No matter the size, companies that work on a global scale (which for many technology companies is a given) and/or with sensitive data must account for regional and national data residency requirements. For example, regulations like General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and Consumer Data Right (CDR) govern how companies address data security and privacy. According to Gartner, “”Personal data privacy has become an intangible asset in this data era. Protecting privacy by standing on the consumers’ side is a differentiator to build a strong brand for any company that is in consumer business.””
A hybrid cloud IAM strategy supports data sovereignty, meaning companies can host and store identity data needed for one locality in that region and for a separate locality in that region, respectively. In addition, hybrid cloud IAM also enables greater customer control over the use and sharing of their data, so businesses can both ensure compliance and deliver on customer expectations.
Companies seeking to lower IAM infrastructure and admin costs. As business becomes increasingly digital, identity teams face a greater volume of requests and a broader range of requirements, putting a strain on already limited resources. Moving identity to the cloud can save significant IT operational costs without compromising support for challenging business use cases.
Hybrid cloud identity offers the convenience of centralized identity management across clouds while providing the means to automate the operation and maintenance of your IAM solution. Cloud identity enables you to free up IT staff from managing infrastructure and instead redirect their focus to higher-value activities.
Start Your Cloud Journey
While often overlooked, SMBs face many of the same access management and identity issues as Fortune 500 and global organizations. It’s critical to secure systems and applications, oftentimes without the staff and resources readily available to support these tasks.
When you combine a hybrid cloud strategy with a modern IAM solution, you can:
- Strengthen security
- Increase employee and partner productivity
- Deliver seamless customer experiences
Overall, cloud computing centered on a hybrid cloud strategy can offer SMBs the greatest flexibility, the optimal balance of security and cost, and the agility needed to rapidly respond to changing priorities and support new initiatives.
YEV KOUP is technical product marketing manager at Ping Identity.
