How to Manage Identity and Access Control in Azure?

Organizations are moving their operations to cloud computing platforms more than ever. Among the top reasons companies prefer cloud over on-premises solutions, there comes the security and ease of management offered by the cloud platforms. There are many ways in which IT teams ensure better protection of data in the cloud. Identity and access management plays a vital role in cloud security by controlling who has access to information in the cloud and how they can access it.

In the following write-up, you will learn the importance of identity and access management in the cloud and the best practices for better Azure cloud protection. We will introduce you to the Azure cloud training program to learn and develop best practices. Read on to find out.

What is Identity and Access Management in Cloud, and Why is it Important?

Identity management is the act of managing identity by defining the access, authentication, providing privileges and authorization for the identity. Through identity management, the cloud team aims to improve productivity and security while reducing costs.

Identity is currently the perimeter of an organization’s IT infrastructure, and it is subject to high risk of impact. Therefore, it is essential to have good identity management processes to ensure the better security of the organization’s assets.

Best Practices in Azure Identity and Access Management

• Common Identity for Different Infrastructure

If your company has a hybrid system in place, then experts recommend that you integrate the directories of on-premises and cloud infrastructure. By doing so, you will be able to manage the identity from any location easily. The method also simplifies the identity management for users.

• Assessing the Risk from Subscriptions

In your company’s cloud environment, you may be having many subscriptions to ensure better functionality. The cloud team needs to create transparency as far as subscriptions are concerned since it helps the cloud security team evaluate the risk with subscriptions and managed groups in the cloud platform. By doing so, the team helps the organization meet security compliance.

• Single Sign-On Facility

In a world where employees access information related to their work from different devices such as laptops, tabs, mobiles etc., cloud teams need to enable a Single Sign-On facility. The cloud team can do it if your company has a single identity solution implemented. Through SSO your users will not have to remember multiple passwords to access the cloud from different devices.

• Conditional Access

Since the employees can access the cloud platform from multiple devices, cloud teams need to ensure that the devices meet the organization’s security compliance standards. Therefore, the team must firstly think of conditions in which the employees access the cloud platform. Azure Active Directory has a conditional access feature that can help the team make better decisions regarding access control.

• Improve Security Measures

With new technologies, the security measures offered by Microsoft Azure keep changing over time. Therefore, the cloud teams must look for ways to improve the security and access control features.

• Protect Privileged Accounts

Security breachers commonly attack privileged accounts to get access to vital information or causing an impact on sensitive resources. From the company’s perspective, both these situations can prove to be very expensive. Therefore, cloud teams must reduce the number of accounts that have access to vital information to minimize the risk of data loss.

Azure Cloud Training for Better Cloud Security

Microsoft Azure Cloud Security Engineers are responsible for implementing security features and functions in place to prevent attacks. To become a certified Microsoft Azure Security Engineer Associate, an aspirant can take up the Microsoft Azure Security Technologies course and write the examination AZ-500. During the course, the aspirant will learn about Azure Active Directory, Azure Identity Protection, Enterprise Governance, Hybrid Identity, Perimeter Security, Host Security, etc. The professionals will create identity management and access control systems, including risk policies, conditional access etc. The candidates can prepare well for the Microsoft Azure Security Engineer Associate examination through hands-on lab training.