The role of identity management is unparalleled in the digital-first business landscape where customer experience reinforced with security is becoming the need of the hour. Whether we talk about managing customers' identities on online platforms or delivering a seamless user experience across multiple touchpoints, identity and access management (IAM) have always been a game-changer. However, with the rapid cloud adoption and increasing deployments on remote servers, implementing IAM seems an uphill battle, especially for multi-cloud environments. Since security is crucial for businesses leveraging on-premises and thinking to move to the cloud, migrating existing IAM tools and overall processes to multi-cloud may increase the challenges. Multi-cloud systems are pretty complex, and businesses can simply shift their existing IAM and expect better security; they must plan their infrastructure security well in advance. Let’s look at some aspects of deploying IAM in multi-cloud environments and how businesses can ensure maximum security and privacy while moving to the cloud. Challenges Related to Identity Management Identity and access management is helping brands scale their overall business growth by shunning the challenges related to security, compliance, and user experience. However, when we talk about identity management in the cloud systems, brands that aren’t leveraging robust identity management solutions would end up compromising the identities of their customers. Also, when shifting the existing customer data from an on-premise server to the cloud, there’s a broader threat vector for customer identities. Managing and shifting hundreds or thousands of customer identities across a highly distributed environment without a robust security strategy could lead to a sneak into the network that may end up with compromised identities. Apart from this, many businesses and organizations don’t have enough resources and lack the skills to support cloud-based IAM and its complexities. And this leads to increased cybersecurity and identity theft risks. Furthermore, managing compliances and data localization regulations could further increase the challenges since managing compliances isn’t a piece of cake when you switch to the cloud. Identity Management with Data Localization and Compliance Management Today, countries are pretty strict regarding data localization since they’re concerned about how businesses collect, store, and manage their citizens’ data. Data localization restricts data flow from one location to another, and businesses collecting data from a particular location must store that data within the geographical area of that location. For instance, if a business is offering services to the citizens of Australia, then the data collected from its citizens must be stored within the physical boundaries of Australia. In multi-cloud environments, implementing identity and access management becomes a tough nut to crack, especially in states where data localization laws are pretty stringent. Businesses must comply with all the necessary data localization norms while implementing an IAM solution to avoid hefty fines and continue delivering services. Furthermore, compliance management is another challenge while businesses plan to incorporate IAM in a multi-cloud environment. Data privacy and security compliances are becoming increasingly stringent across the globe. And businesses shouldn’t ignore the importance of adhering to these regulations to ensure their business remains up and running. Whether it’s the EU’s GDPR or California’s CCPA, brands need to ensure that they’re handling user data as per these regulations to avoid hefty fines and to maintain their brand reputation globally. How Can Businesses Benefit from a Cloud-Based Identity and Access Management Solution? With technology shaping the future of the identity and access management landscape, a cloud-based identity management solution can help brands kill two birds with one stone. A cloud-based customer identity and access management solution ensures robust security and eventually helps businesses get all the necessary global compliances. Here’s what an organization gets with a cloud-based identity and access management solution: Muti-factor authentication (MFA): MFA ensures that even if one layer of security is compromised, the other layer protects customer identities. For instance, if the primary authentication mechanism, i.e., password credentials, are compromised, the one-time password verification ensures that no user account is compromised. Global data and privacy compliance, including GDPR and CCPA: With a cloud-based identity management solution, brands can ensure they adhere to the latest data and privacy regulations, including EU’s GDPR and California’s CCPA. These regulations help brands quickly build trust with potential customers since they can share their details without worrying about security and privacy. Customer IAM offers seamless user experience: Moving to the cloud could be the best option when brands deploy their IAM through a customer identity and access management solution from a customer experience perspective. Whether it’s social login or single sign-on, a CIAM can always pave the way for a rich customer experience when deployed in a multi-cloud environment. Passwordless login: A passwordless login experience could help brands deliver a rich customer experience with the highest level of security. This ensures that businesses can provide greater convenience to users without compromising their identity security. In Conclusion With brands inching towards multi-cloud environments, managing the security and privacy of customer identities becomes more crucial than ever before. Organizations don’t pay attention to security aspects while moving to the cloud, which may be why they compromise customer details. However, a cloud-based identity management platform can improve the overall security infrastructure and offer necessary security and privacy compliances. Hence, businesses thinking of leveraging a multi-cloud environment without the hassles of IAM deployment challenges shouldn’t ignore the importance of incorporating a right from the beginning. robust customer IAM solution

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Multi-Cloud Environment and Hurdles of Incorporating IAM

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Deepak Gupta

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