Table of Content
- Significance of IAM
- What makes up IAM?
- The seven principles of the GDPR
- Effective IAM strategies that will help organizations comply with GDPR requirements
- Conclusion
The European Union passed a regulation called the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on May 25, 2018 that aims to give EU citizens a greater control over their personal information. The policies in this regulation are framed to establish control and transparency on how organizations collect, process, use, store, and share personal information.
Every organization that collects and processes personal data from the citizens of the EU must comply with the GDPR. This ensures that any information regarding the user's privacy is available only to the right people. With the help of an effective and reliable identity and access management (IAM) solution, organizations can meet GDPR requirements.
Significance of IAM
IAM solutions ensure that individuals have appropriate, timely access to resources.
With an IAM solution in place, organizations can ensure that only appropriate people have access to users' personal data. IAM solutions help implement security policies such as Zero Trust and principle of least privilege, and prevent data breaches and unauthorized access of sensitive data.
What makes up IAM?
IAM encompasses the practices and technologies required to give users authorized access to systems, databases, and programs.
There are four principles that make up IAM:
Authentication:
Every user who wants to access a system must first authenticate themselves by providing their credentials. This includes multiple ways of authentication using passwords, smartcards, biometrics, or other identifying factors across multiple devices.
Authorization:
After authentication, the level of access and permissions the user gets is determined. Some users will have limited privileges compared to the high-profile users. Often, the privileges and permissions are assigned based on contextual factors such as a user's role and designation
Administration:
User authentication has to be monitored and authorization needs to be managed. The more complex an organization, the more likely it is that IAM administrative tasks will need to be automated.
Audit:
By securing corporate data, IAM systems aid organizations in better complying with governmental rules. Also, any data required for auditing is readily available upon request.
When IAM security is implemented and followed by the organization, complying with the requirements of the GDPR becomes easier. A breach is far less likely to happen, and even if it does, the effects are greatly reduced.
The seven principles of the GDPR
The EU GDPR sets out seven key principles:
- Lawfulness, fairness, and transparency
- Purpose limitation
- Data minimization
- Accuracy
- Storage limitation
- Integrity and confidentiality (security)
- Accountability
These principles should be the foundation of any organization that stores and handles personal data.
In order to comply with the GDPR, organizations can use convenient and personalized IAM strategies.
Effective IAM strategies that will help organizations comply with GDPR requirements
1. Processing of personal data
The GDPR states that all personal data should be processed lawfully, fairly, and in a transparent manner. Any organization found in violation faces severe ramifications. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) and access policies help to secure access of data by establishing a centralized and unified IAM platform. By doing this, organizations ensure that only users with authorized access can gain control over certain resources. Plus, IAM makes it possible for systems to be promptly restored by determining what personal data has been impacted by a breach right away.
2. Data minimization
One of the fundamental concepts of the GDPR is the minimization of data. No organization should store data that it does not need. The ability to centrally manage all access and authorization data pertaining to the organization's staff, clients, and partners is made possible by IAM. Data minimization determines how long access is granted and how long information is stored in the system. Timely deletion of user account information is critical, as orphaned accounts provide a gateway for hackers to loot data from within the organization. IAM helps reduce cybersecurity risks while aiding with data minimization requirements.
3. Governance
The GDPR requires a timely audit of the technologies and practices in place to protect data. In case of an event where the customer or anyone else believes their data or personal information is at risk, the GDPR also has provisions for on-demand audits. A major step towards passing an audit is proving that everyone's access rights have been vetted by the line of business managers.
4. Privileged account management:
Ensuring control and audit of administrator access and privileged credentials is crucial for complying with the GDPR. Privileged accounts are like gold to the organization, and businesses have to keep the data stored in these accounts guarded.
Key privileged account management principles that help with complying with GDPR regulations include:
- Password vaulting to prevent the sharing (and oversharing) of administrative credentials.
- Session audits to assign individual accountability to administrator activity.
- Access given to IT administrators based on the level of permissions required to do their respective jobs.
Conclusion
GDPR compliance is necessary if an organization gathers, uses, or maintains personal information of EU citizens. With an effective IAM solution in place, it is possible to detect threats and remediate them quickly. IAM improves sensitive data governance, accountability, security, and privacy to help with meeting GDPR requirements.