Access management, or IAM, comprises the systems and procedures that allow IT administrators to designate a digital identity for each individual, authenticate them when they log in, authorize them to access specific resources, and monitor and manage those identities throughout their lifecycle.
It is important to avoid granting users excess access privileges. Typically, this involves offering all users the lowest level of access possible while still allowing them to perform their roles.
There are several areas that fall under the category of access management:
Authentication requires users to provide credentials to the access management system before being granted access to their required resources.
Single sign-on is a one-time process that users execute to access all of their resources. With single sign-on, users can access different applications but only have to authenticate once. There is no need to remember multiple usernames and passwords for various applications.
Federated single sign-on allows users from outside of a domain, such as users from other divisions or organizations, to access externally hosted applications without the need to remember and provide account credentials.
Privileged access management provides access management services for users with elevated privileges, such as system administrators. These users generally perform tasks that can expose sensitive information.