Business from anywhere: IAM as a vital piece of the Business Continuity puzzle
Published: 2021-08-10 09:54:23

COVID-19 was a shock to the global economy. The pandemic aside, the enforced and voluntary closure of offices has dramatically changed the way businesses work. Overnight, employees were instructed to work from home, in many cases indefinitely. There are still tens of thousands of organizations around the world who are still unsure of when, if ever, they will resume a traditional office-oriented working environment.

**Business Continuity Plan (BCP) challenges for enterprises**

Even more than the longevity of office closure however, it was the suddenness with which it hit that was so disruptive. For businesses without a BCP to address such an eventuality, it took many painful weeks or more before they could resume operations.

When remote operations did begin, many businesses - especially in domains involving sensitive data, such as healthcare and BFSI - faced concerns and scrutiny from both their customers and regulatory authorities. With large workforces working from home, data and application security became a genuine worry.

As you prepare for the next major global disruption, here’s how an [Identity & Access Management (IAM) solution](https://www.akku.work/) like Akku could play an important role in keeping your business running in a work-from-anywhere world.

**Remote identity management with Active Directory**

A majority of global enterprises use on-prem Microsoft Active Directory (AD) to manage user identities across their organization. It’s an effective solution as long as all users are working from the same premises. When they are not, however, a cloud-based identity management solution is essential.

As a robust IAM solution, Akku can integrate with your on-premise Active Directory through a secure tunnel - by doing this, all the user credentials and identity stored on your AD can be accessed by your IAM from anywhere. This allows you to continue to use your familiar AD for identity management, while also eliminating the need to take up a complex and expensive migration of your identity management system to the cloud.

Once your IAM enables access to your user identities from your AD from any location, you can then progress to the Access Management functionality of the IAM platform, to grant due access to all necessary assets (files, platforms and applications) to only the specific users who require it.

**Security during remote access**

A major concern with the work-from-anywhere environment is security. To preserve the sanctity of your assets, you need to control the users accessing them, and ensure secure access for authorized users. Two key ways to achieve this are through device-based restrictions and multi-factor authentication.

By restricting asset access to only registered or company-owned devices, you ensure that the organization’s apps and data are not impacted by any malware or security vulnerabilities that may exist on non-authorized devices. [Multi-factor authentication (MFA)] (https://www.akku.work/product/multi-factor-authentication.html) reconfirms the identity of the user accessing the company’s digital assets by additional means beyond a password - such as time-based OTPs or push notifications, for instance.

Through implementation of an IAM solution along with increasing the security of your cloud assets, you can also manage highly granular access control. Each individual user can be granted access to only the files, platforms and software that they require, with easy provisioning and deprovisioning to quickly and reliably provide and revoke access.

**Real-world benefits during disruptions**

Through a straightforward implementation of Akku that integrates with your Active Directory and acts as the identity provider to all of your applications, you are geared up to manage remote working at a moment’s notice. 

In a world of increasing uncertainty, this means business continuity, with uninterrupted, secure and efficient operations through any circumstances that may arise.

COVID-19 was a once in a century phenomenon, but large-scale disruptive events are not that uncommon. Allow us to help you create your BCP to address any eventuality by setting up Akku to enable a seamless and secure work-from-anywhere operations. [Contact our team of experts to get started] (https://www.akku.work/contact-us.html).

This blog originally published at [Akku Blog] (https://www.akku.work/blog/). Link to the [original blog] (https://www.akku.work/blog/business-from-anywhere-iam-as-a-vital-piece-of-the-business-continuity-puzzle/)