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Overview
Rapid adoption of dynamic multi-cloud environments is making cloud infrastructure and entitlement management extremely complex. With every new addition of cloud technologies and services, organizations are witnessing a growing number of users, their privileges and corresponding services. This continuous process is resulting in the emergence of new and unique use case challenges. If these use case challenges are not solved with adequate access control policies, organizations can face devastating consequences.
ARCON, being a strong advocate of cloud-first journey, has always been at the forefront of offering best-in-class Cloud Access Governance solutions that include comprehensive CIEM capabilities as well as classic PAM capabilities. In this blog, we will discuss three distinct use cases solved by ARCON Cloud Access Governance.
Use Case 1: Modify Access Policies (Provision or Deprovision of Policies)
In a typical cloud environment, there are hundreds of identities that continuously interact with applications and cloud systems to perform different tasks. There are identity access policies assigned to these identities that ensure role-based and need-based access to systems and applications to perform various tasks. There could be situations where few of these assigned policies remain unused over time. Unutilized permissions, if misused, could potentially affect the application assets/ data assets/ systems.
Alternatively, there could be requirements to add any new access policy against any identity either permanently or temporarily. When the user requests new access permissions to perform and specific task and there is an unexpected delay from the admin, there could be a hindrance in the regular workflow. If there is no mechanism to modify the identity access policies required in multi-cloud environment to ensure scalability, flexibility, and security, it could affect IT efficiency and productivity.
ARCON Cloud Governance is useful to organizations as it removes the need for planned provisioning or deprovisioning of identities. It offers the flexibility to add/ remove access permissions based on requirements as per requirements, even ad hoc requirements. As a result, there –
- Won’t be any risk of access permission misuse
- Won’t be any risk of ‘default’ access permissions
- Will have the benefit of on-demand provision/ deprovision of policies
- Will have the flexibility of policy deployment
- Will be uninterrupted workflow even in multi-cloud environments
Use Case 2: Risk Score based on the Level of Risks
It could be a huge risk if an organization has an access policy for a user and there is no risk assessment of the utilization of the permission given to that user. The organization could face long term consequences sans risk analysis mechanisms because if the access right is misused, the IT security team will remain unaware of it.
ARCON Cloud Governance solution evaluates the utilization of permissions granted to the users for different systems and applications seamlessly. The access information details are analyzed thoroughly by the solution and does the categorization whether the action is used or unused. It can even detect shadow-admin rights where the users may not have highly privileged access rights but have delegated privileges by being a part of a group of users. ARCON Cloud Governance peruses the access permission patterns, password reset requests or new policy enforcements of each user in the cloud platform and identities whether it is an absolute requirement or not.
This way the solution can –
- Help IT administrators to take major IT decisions on whom to continue allowing with crucial access and whom to revoke of access rights
- Ensure every suspicious user is revoked of privileges on time before any potential damage
- Any act of authorization and authentication (valid access, genuine password resets, new policy enforcements etc.) in cloud is restored throughout
Use Case 3: Data Visualization and Recommendations
With the help of data visualization, organizations can ensure comprehensive visibility of the available data in the organization in the form of common graphics, charts, infographics, etc. The visuals give data-driven insights that are easy to comprehend.
Now, in a multi-cloud environment, if there is no data visualization mechanism, then the organization will not be able to analyze the “which”, “where” and “what” of any data. Indirectly, the administrators could face challenges to check the usage of policies and service principles attached to the displayed data. This could be dangerous from the admin perspective. Be it an individual user, or any role-wise user group, or even a service account holder – the organization could face unprecedented threats without any visibility of the data of their activities, workflow, distribution pattern of policies and the associated services.
ARCON Cloud Governance helps organizations with a comprehensive visibility of the data that includes detailed analysis of the permissions associated with the designated user/ user group/ service principles/ service accounts. The dashboard shows a detailed graphical representation of the distribution of policies and the valid services associated with those incorporated policies. With this solution, it eliminates access threat possibilities by identifying the anomalies in real-time and thus security is restored even in multi-cloud platform. Here, the administrator can –
- Keep a track of the access policies allowed to any user/ user groups/ roles of the users and service principles/ service accounts
- View and verify the distribution of services and utilization of data against every action on the cloud platform, even in multiple layers
- Inspect, analyze and implement which policy must be continued and which one to be revoked on time
Conclusion
ARCON continuously innovates and carries out R&D to identify emerging use case challenges and design solutions. The solution, Cloud Access Governance secures organizations’ cloud-first journey through its robust access control and risk management features.
