All-In-One Identity Management and Cloud Security

In our previous article, we covered the benefits and drawbacks of different authorization models, namely:

• Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
• Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC)
• Policy-Based Access Control (PBAC)

We summarized that each of them had its unique characteristics. However, for organizations aiming to scale and manage thousands of users, no single method covers all use cases and application technologies. This is because certain types of applications and use cases are better suited for a structured role-based approach, while others require real-time contextual decisions.

While there are overlapping qualities among these models, individually, none of them can address all the necessary aspects of access control. To meet the needs of these organizations, a combination of the benefits from all these authorization models is required to fully ensure the security requirements of enterprises from every possible angle.

This is where the need for a hybrid authorization model arises. With all these considerations, we at EmpowerID embarked on a journey to create a perfect authorization recipe – one that encompassed all aspects of authorization without the drawbacks associated with each model. The result of this endeavor is a unique hybrid approach that combines role and attribute compliance, which we aptly named "Compliant Access Delivery."

The overall goal of Compliant Access Delivery required using the best of each approach implemented following the principles of Zero Trust and Least Privilege. Based on RBAC relational modeling, it provides the backbone or
structure for defining an organization and its overall policies while leveraging the flexibility and real-time contextual nature of ABAC and PBAC to offer the most comprehensive access control solution. 

Compliant Access Delivery

“Compliant Access Delivery” is, first, the capability to map out in advance the position appropriate access for employees, partners, and customers and the risk policies that will measure and ensure continued compliance and to then monitor and enforce this compliant state through automation.

The natural follow-up question to this is “What makes access compliant?” Compliant access is appropriate to the person to whom it is assigned in accordance with the organizational standards and business policies to minimize risk. Compliant Access Delivery synthesizes multiple Identity and Access Management (IAM) technologies with a business modeling approach to automate and maintain each user's appropriate access to IT systems while continuously minimizing risk. 

Compliant Access is a well-defined target state against which the current state can be
measured.

The key to Compliant Access are the words “appropriate” and compliant with “business policies.” With Compliant Access, the devil is in the details, and that is where traditional solutions miss the mark. Due to its distinct language, processes, and policies, Compliant Access cannot be delivered by an IAM system that doesn't bridge the divide between the technical system and the business. With its operating procedures, industry norms, and regulatory restrictions, the business defines which jobs are appropriate, what constitutes a risk, and what is considered non-compliant. To achieve this, EmpowerID leverages both the organization’s business model and its language to enforce and provision Compliant Access across Cloud and on-premises systems.

How Does Compliant Access Leverage Your Business Model? 

Defining business-appropriate access is a challenge for IT organizations using their existing IAM systems. These systems were designed to manage only the technical aspects of access control and universally lack a conceptual “bridge” to tie the technical entitlements to the business’s operating model and the activities or “Functions” performed by its participants. 

Everything we cover in this blog can be explored further in our whitepaper “A Guide to Authorization”. You can find that whitepaper here: 

Business Processes and Functions

Businesses are composed of processes for producing and delivering goods or services. These processes involve tasks performed by internal and external participants. Each task can be divided into functions needed for its completion. For instance, creating a purchase order is a function within a purchasing process. While a purchase order is recognizable and its creation straightforward, not all employees should have this ability. During access reviews, managers can easily identify authorized users. This simplicity contrasts with technical entitlements that grant system access, often named confusingly. Functions bridge the gap between technical access and business understanding, ensuring a clear separation between business and IT.

Risk Policies

Compliant Access must be "appropriate" and align with an organization's "business policies." These policies are specific to the organization and cater to its operations, industry, processes, and regulations. Notably, these policies are distinct from the organization's IT systems. For example, the customer acquisition process's risks remain consistent across different Customer Relationship Managers (CRMs) like SalesForce.com or HubSpot. Users' end-to-end functions can be defined before any IT system interaction. Identifying higher-risk functions and potential fraud combinations empowers threat mitigation. Crucially, establishing risk policies at the function level ensures core business activities are monitored effectively. Business users often face confusion when risk policies are tied to technical entitlements instead of familiar business concepts, hindering visibility into actual actions.

Bridging the Gap between Business and Technology

To align business-appropriate access and risk policies, focusing on functions is crucial. This requires bridging them to IT systems, where business specialists play a key role. They map out business processes, activities, and roles involved (Figure 41). Collaborating with IT experts, they convert functions into task-based application roles within specific systems (Figure 42). EmpowerID supports mapping roles to functions and even mapping fine-grained permissions to functions. This clarifies which IT entitlements enable functions, who can perform them, and how access is assigned. Functions enhance business clarity in your IT landscape.

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It is easy to see how the fragmentation of the modern IT landscape caused by the adoption of a Cloud-first model has increased the importance of a having well-managed authorization strategy and the complexity of achieving this goal. 

To help you choose the best access control model for your organization or application, we compare the most popular options, we'll also analyze and discuss the various attribute-based and role-based approaches for application authorization, including their applicability, strengths, and weaknesses: 

A well-designed authorization system is essential for managing the day-to-day activities to control who has access to what and enable organizations to safely undergo a digital transformation moving more of their business online and into the Cloud.

Understanding the differences between different authorization models is critical for choosing an appropriate access control method for your organization or application. 

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) is a security and authorization model for securing access to computer
resources used by almost all enterprises to secure their systems. RBAC access is based on roles defined by the business using them. In the RBAC model, roles are created, and then sets of permissions for resources are assigned to the role. Users are then granted one or more roles to receive access to resources. 

Fig: RBAC PDP Flow Determining Access to Bob’s X-Ray for Alice

RBAC Benefits
In the RBAC model, since access is not directly assigned to users but bundled into assignments made to roles, the correct assumption is that controlling and maintaining access is easier. Moreover, because roles and access management can be centralized, it is evident who has a role and access to the role grants. There are fewer assignments to be managed, which decreases the cost of security management and compliance auditing. Furthermore, according to a 2010 NIST study, correct RBAC implementation and efficient provisioning can also reduce employee downtime resulting in significant ROI.

• RBAC is deterministic. An RBAC approach makes it easy to know who has access to what at any moment in time.
• RBAC is more direct and easier to visualize. Security admins can visualize the actors and resources they will affect when creating or modifying a policy.
• RBAC is inherently auditable. With RBAC assignments, as the consequences of that access are visible, it is simple for business owners to certify or attest to access granted. This visibility contrasts with ABAC where a “before the fact audit" is impossible and the effects of a rule are difficult to ascertain.
• RBAC can be simpler than ABAC. For example, with RBAC, bundles of access can be directly assigned to a user. To do this in ABAC requires the creation of a new rule.

RBAC Weaknesses

Unfortunately, the precise nature of the RBAC model can also be considered the source of many of its weaknesses:

• RBAC requires advanced knowledge of the Subjects and Resources and, typically, does not support making on-the-fly contextual decisions.
• An RBAC-only approach can result in an enormous number of roles to accomplish fine-grained authorization.
• Resource owners must know something about the roles and their intended purpose to grant access to those roles accurately.
• Resources must be organized into collections to facilitate delegation.
• Probably the most well-known problem with RBAC is “role explosion.”  Organizations often end up with large numbers of roles to accommodate people performing the same job function within different geographical or functional areas within the company. Given a substantial number of roles and collections of resources, a correspondingly large number of delegations would need to be created and managed. 

ATTRIBUTE-BASED ACCESS CONTROL (ABAC)

Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC): An access control method where the subject requests to perform operations on objects are granted or denied based on assigned attributes of the subject, assigned attributes of the object, environment conditions, and a set of policies that are specified in terms of those attributes and conditions.

The policies that can be implemented in an ABAC model are limited only to the degree imposed by the computational language and the richness of the available attributes.

Essentially, the more decision data at your disposal at runtime, the more sophisticated your ABAC policies can be. 

ABAC relies on user attributes for authorization decisions. ABAC policies are rules that evaluate access based upon the following four sets of attributes:

• Subject – the attributes concerning the person or actor being evaluated.
• Resource – the attributes of the target or object being affected.
• Action – describe the action to be performed on the Resource
• Environment – includes attributes such as the time of the day, IP subnet, and others that do not relate to
  either the Subject or the Resource. 

Fig: NIST SP 800-162 ABAC Definition

ABAC Benefits

The key advantage of ABAC is that it does not allow application developers to hardcode a static list of roles and oversimplify their authorization source code. Rather, ABAC forces them to centralize all authorization decisions and call out at runtime to decide based on the Subject, Resource, Action, and Environment request attributes. Another key benefit is ABAC’s sometimes simpler nature. This simplicity can make it easier to understand how a rule grants access to a resource when dealing with a small number of rules. In contrast, RBAC does seem foreign to many users, and, especially during the early phase of its adoption, the levels of abstraction can be challenging for an IT team.

One other added advantage of ABAC is its flexibility. With ABAC, as long as the necessary data is available, almost anything can be represented as a rule-based query. For example, a rule evaluated at runtime in a login session can use contextual information—even information passed in via SAML claims or JWT tokens. In contrast, when delivering the role membership for a user to the application, a standard RBAC engine would not evaluate this type of information.

Everything we cover in this blog can be explored further in our whitepaper “A Guide to Authorization”. You can find that whitepaper here: 

ABAC Primary Benefits

• ABAC enforces centralized management of authorization policies
• ABAC makes it easy to specify access rules as simple queries.
• ABAC rules can be extraordinarily fine-grained and contextual.
• ABAC rules can evaluate attributes of Subjects and Resources that are not inventoried by the authorization system.
• ABAC rules need less maintenance and overhead because they do not require the creation or maintenance of the structure on which an RBAC model depends, e.g., roles and resource locations.

ABAC Weaknesses
The first challenge we encounter with implementing policies like this is the information needs to be obtained and evaluated at runtime. In our policy example, if we needed to know if the user’s nationality was Swiss, then this information would likely reside in either the corporate Active Directory or HR system. Moreover, if we needed to know if the company was in Emergency Mode or not, this essential information might be difficult to obtain in a live corporate environment. Likewise, if we needed to as certain their out-of-office status, this would reside in a corporate email system such as Microsoft 365. Furthermore, to attain information for network login sessions or the MFA status would require a query to an Identity Provider such as Ping Federate. 

ABAC’s Primary Weaknesses

• ABAC makes it extremely difficult to perform a “before the fact audit” and determine the permissions available to a specific user. To successfully determine access, not only might a considerable number of rules need to be executed, but they must also be done in the same order in which the system applies them. As a result, this could make it impossible to assess risk exposure for any given employee position.
• In a comparable manner to how a “Role Explosion” can occur with RBAC, an explosion can also occur with ABAC where a system with N number of attributes would have 2N possible rule combinations.
• Unless rules are kept extremely simple and do not access data from various source systems, ABAC systems with complex rules from multiple attribute sources can be unacceptably slow to answer authorization queries. 

POLICY-BASED ACCESS CONTROL (PBAC)

Policy-Based Access Control (PBAC) is not a formally defined standard but rather describes an authorization model that combines RBAC and ABAC concepts and eliminates some of their shortcomings. The key concept behind PBAC is that policies are expressed as assignment relationships that can be visualized and manipulated graphically. Access rights to perform operations against resources or objects are acquired through relationships referred to as associations. This includes the ability to define complex hierarchical relationships with inheritance, which is overly cumbersome in ABAC. One might consider PBAC as “relational ABAC.” PBAC is best used for real time enforcement of authorization decisions where a well-developed role model can be leveraged for policy assignment.

PBAC policies are inherently more efficient than ABAC policies because authorization decisions are not based on multiple computed and then combined local decisions. Instead, they are based on the net result of multiple policies based on relationships existing within a single database. This aspect also allows PBAC to enforce dynamic Segregation of Duties (SOD) rules, which are not entirely achievable with ABAC. A last key feature mentioned is PBAC support for “before the fact audit,” which is the ability to see who has access to a resource at any time, and not just during the real-time evaluation of a policy set.



EMPOWERID’S HYBRID ROLE & ATTRIBUTE-COMPLIANT ACCESS APPROACH 

Defining and maintaining compliant access for a large organization can be a daunting task. Some types of applications and use cases are better suited to a more structured role-based approach, whereas others require real-time contextual decisions. RBAC, ABAC, and PBAC are three ways of managing authorization policies. Moreover, while both have overlapping qualities, individually, each one cannot cover all the necessary aspects of access control. However, for optimal, dynamic support of an IT organization’s needs, EmpowerID supports RBAC relational modeling. RBAC relational modeling provides the backbone or structure for defining an organization and its overall policies while leveraging the flexibility and real-time contextual nature of ABAC and PBAC to offer the best comprehensive solution. 

EmpowerID’s sophisticated role and relationship modeling allow security architects to model the organization and its structure and policies, including segregation of duties policies to prevent undesired combinations of access. As illustrated above, flexible attribute-based ABAC or PBAC policies support the centralized real-time decision point for applications that can call the EmpowerID API for authorization decisions. The ABAC/PBAC engine enhances or modifies the powerful RBAC engine's decisions, allowing their use only when greater flexibility or contextual information such as risk, location, and MFA type is required. By including the pre-calculated access results that the engine derives from complex RBAC policies that account for inheritance and even attribute-based queries, ABAC/PBAC policies are made much more potent. The end-goal of leveraging each approach's best is to deliver what EmpowerID calls “Compliant Access Delivery.” 

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Conclusion

In summary, we learned that no single method covers all use cases and application technologies. The overall goal of Compliant Access Delivery requires using the best of each approach implemented following the principles of Zero Trust and Least Privilege. When executed correctly, this automates access assignments and reduces an organization’s attack surface, making it harder for attackers to find privileged credentials and offers them fewer capabilities to perform malicious activities when they compromise a privileged account. 

Microsoft Identity Manager (MIM) is a legacy identity management solution that has been around for a while. Organizations have been leveraging Microsoft Identity Manager (MIM) to centrally manage user identities, automate user provisioning and de-provisioning because of its relatively easy integration within the Microsoft Ecosystem. While it has served many organizations well, it lacks some of the essential features that modern identity management software offers.

Here are a few of the key features that MiM is missing compared to modern identity management solutions:

1. Cloud-First Approach: 

   MIM was designed for on-premises environments, and while it can be extended to support cloud-based environments, it lacks the cloud-first approach that modern identity management solutions offer. This can make it challenging to manage hybrid environments or to take full advantage of the cloud's scalability and flexibility.

2. Flexible Identity Models: 

   MIM relies heavily on the Active Directory schema, which can limit its flexibility when it comes to managing non-AD identities such as contractors, partners, and customers. Modern identity management solutions offer more flexible identity models that can accommodate a wider range of identity types and sources.

3. Self-Service Provisioning:

   MiM requires significant manual intervention for account provisioning and access request workflows. Modern identity management solutions offer self-service capabilities that enable users to request and manage their own access, reducing the administrative burden on IT staff.

4. Access Governance: 

   MiM offers basic access control functionality but lacks the more advanced access governance features found in modern identity management solutions. This includes capabilities such as entitlement cataloging, risk-based access certification, and access analytics.

5. User Experience:

   MIM's user interface is complex and challenging to use, MiM’s frustrating User Interface is a common gripe amongst all its customers. Modern identity management solutions offer streamlined user experiences that are more intuitive and user-friendly, reducing the learning curve and improving user adoption.

In summary, while MIM has been a reliable identity management solution for many organizations, it lacks some of the essential features that modern identity management solutions offer. If you're looking for a more flexible, scalable, and user-friendly identity management solution, it's time to consider upgrading to a modern identity management platform such as EmpowerID.

EmpowerID is a next-generation identity and access management platform that provides unparalleled flexibility and scalability. With EmpowerID, you can easily manage identities, applications, and resources across your entire organization, regardless of size or complexity.

Here are just a few reasons why you should consider moving to EmpowerID:

1. Greater Flexibility: EmpowerID offers a highly configurable platform that can be customized to fit your organization's unique needs. With our flexible architecture and robust API, you can easily integrate EmpowerID with your existing systems and workflows.
2. Improved Security: EmpowerID provides comprehensive security features, including multi-factor authentication, role-based access control, and privileged access management. With EmpowerID, you can ensure that your organization's sensitive data and resources are protected from unauthorized access.
3. Simplified Administration and Self-Service: EmpowerID's intuitive user interface and streamlined workflows make it easy for administrators to manage user accounts, access requests, and other identity-related tasks. With EmpowerID, you can reduce the administrative burden on your IT team and improve overall efficiency.
4. Better User Experience: EmpowerID offers a seamless user experience, with a single sign-on portal that provides easy access to all of your organization's applications and resources. With EmpowerID, your users can enjoy a streamlined, hassle-free experience that improves productivity and reduces frustration.

So if you're looking for a powerful, flexible, and easy-to-use identity management solution, look no further than EmpowerID. Contact us today to learn more about how EmpowerID can help you take control of your organization's identity and access management needs.

If you are an ActiveRoles user, you know the value of a powerful and flexible Active Directory management solution. But as IT environments become more complex and diverse, managing identities and access across multiple systems and platforms requires a more comprehensive approach.

A modern Identity Governance solution provides more diverse features that understand the growing complexities of modern IT environments enabling deeper use cases than what you'd be limited by Quest Active Roles. While it provides many useful features for managing AD, it has quite a few limitations compared to other AD and identity governance platforms.

One of the biggest game-breakers with Active Roles is that it offers very limited functionality for Cloud users. While in theory, Quest can manage cloud users, but only to an extremely limited extent. The tool allows you to create and provision an AD user to a cloud system. However, the cloud system objects aren't inventoried and managed in the user interface, and you always need to have an AD user as your starting point for management.

This limitation can be problematic for organizations that rely heavily on cloud-based systems, as it creates an additional layer of complexity that may not be necessary. Without proper inventory and management of cloud-based users, organizations may struggle to maintain security and compliance standards.

1. Restrictive reporting and analytics capabilities:

   Quest ActiveRoles provides limited reporting and analytics capabilities, limited to just Users and Groups, as compared to other IGA Platforms that can provide in-depth and comprehensive analytics on every single AD Attribute. This severely limits you from getting a complete picture of your identity and access management activities.

2. Neglible support for non-Microsoft platforms:

   Quest Active Roles is designed to work only with Microsoft Active Directory environments and does not support other directory services. This can be a significant limitation for your organization if you use a mix of different platforms, such as Unix or Linux. 

3. Limited integration with other Systems and IAM solutions:

   Quest ActiveRoles does not integrate well with other IAM solutions, making it difficult for organizations to implement a comprehensive identity governance program. Active Roles also is limited to just being able to manage only your Active Directory, providing no way to manage users on other Systems and Applications. 

4. Finite automation capabilities:

   Quest ActiveRoles does not provide extensive automation capabilities, which can make it difficult for organizations to automate repetitive tasks and workflows. Users will have to rely on writing scripting to complete tasks, which, when managing directories with millions of groups, objects, and users, can make even small tasks take exponentially longer and more expensive.

5. Lacking Cloud readiness:

   ActiveRoles Server was designed to work with on-premises Active Directory environments, which is not ideal for organizations that are moving to the cloud or adopting hybrid environments. A modern Identity Management solution offers better cloud-ready features, such as support for multi-cloud environments and identity as a service (IDaaS) capabilities, reported missing in Quest ActiveRoles. 

6. Lacking essential Identity features:

   ActiveRoles Server lacks advanced features like identity governance, access certification, risk-based access control, and identity analytics that are essential for modern organizations to manage identity and access in complex environments. Self Service features such as Access Requests and Password Resets are shown to have saved organizations millions of dollars in helpdesk costs and are seen as a must for any good IGA platform.

EmpowerID offers a modern, web-based solution that goes beyond Active Directory management to provide full Identity Governance and Administration, Access Management, and Privileged Access Management capabilities. With EmpowerID, you can manage identities and access across on-premises and cloud-based systems, applications, and platforms, including Microsoft Azure, SAP, Oracle, and more.

EmpowerID's True Zero Trust administration for Azure and other platforms allows for fine-grained access controls and risk management, and its low-code identity orchestration engine allows for easy automation of complex business processes. EmpowerID's powerful RBAC and PBAC hybrid authorization engine provides efficient and flexible administration and runtime policy enforcement.

Not only does EmpowerID offer advanced capabilities beyond Active Roles, but it also offers the convenience and scalability of a modern SaaS platform. EmpowerID's modular licensing allows you to add or remove features as your needs change easily, and its cloud-based deployment means you can manage your identities and access from anywhere.

Don't settle for less with ActiveRoles - Make the switch to EmpowerID and experience the power and flexibility of a modern, web-based Identity Governance and Administration solution that goes beyond Active Directory management.

If you'd like to read more about Cloud Ready Identity Governance Platforms, we'd recommend our Whitepapers on these subjects: Siemens Case Study, Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) Report