Regulatory Compliance Made ‘Easier’ With IAM Solutions

The growing cybersecurity landscape is presenting many threat incidents, posing severe risks to data and information security.

Thus, in the current data-driven world, securing data has become the topmost priority for organizations and governments globally.

This gave rise to many industry-specific regulations aimed at ensuring data security and privacy. Now, complying with these regulations has become a serious challenge for many companies.

These regulations impose high fines, penalties, and even regulatory-level punishments on firms failing to comply with the set rules. Thus, it’s imperative for every firm to meet these compliance regulations, and the Identity and Access Management (IAM) solutions can help you!

A robust IAM program, backed by an effective strategy and ability to undergo successful audits, can boost your organization’s security posture and meet compliance requirements.

ALSO READ: 8-Point Identity and Access Management Audit Checklist

However, as the number of users, systems, and applications has multiplied in a typical enterprise IT environment, it has become increasingly challenging to maintain accurate and reliable data about every user on every system.

But, IAM systems can overcome this problem by automating user administration processes so that data about users can be maintained more efficiently and reliably.

Here, we bring you pictorial representations illustrating how the management of identities and entitlements is done with and without Identity and Access Management (IAM).

Without Identity and Access Management (IAM)

With Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Here, we will see the list of 7 popular compliance regulations and understand how IAM solutions help comply with them:

1) Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

This compliance has national standards for processing electronic health transactions that demand secure electronic access to health data. It mandates to comply with the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) data and privacy regulations.

IAM helps in meeting HIPPA compliance requirements through well-defined identity and access management. Key methods include single-on, multifactor authentication, password rotation, least privilege management, account provisioning, and de-provisioning and others.

2) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

Introduced by EU, GDPR subjects organizations failing in compliance with penalties equaling 4 percent of their annual turnover. IAM can help organizations avoid GDPR penalties through:

• Identity Federation and ISO
• Identity Provisioning
• Identity Analytics
• Managing user consent on data tracking and retrieval
• Assisting user in exercising their rights to get data erased
• Notify user in case of a data breach incident

ALSO READ: Effective Identity and Access Management Implementation

3) Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS)

This is a security standard for companies involving credit card transactions. IAM can help meet this compliance through data access management abilities. It does so using the ‘least privilege’ principle of granting limited access.

IAM also applies identification management for non-registered users and administrators on system components by assigning unique IDs, revoking terminated users, removing inactive accounts, among other ways.

4) North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC)

This standard mandates core cybersecurity-related technical requirements such as access control, authentication, reporting of electronic access to IT infrastructure, and segregation of duties.

Various NERC standards call for strict audits of electronic access. IAM solutions help comply with this regulation by way of access management, centralized control, and least privileges.

5) Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)

This standard is about governance access to student records and applies to all educational institutions and related agencies. This regulatory requires organizations to confirm and authenticate parent identities to offer access to Personally Identifiable Information (PII).

IAM solutions help meet this regulatory by way of:

• Setting authentication levels by data vulnerability to risks
• Secure management of authentication information from creation to disposal
• Policy enforcement to avoid authentication misuse
• Management of user identities

6) Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GBLA)

This applies to financial institutions in safeguarding public information with them. This rule regulates the collection and disposal of public financial information along with implementing security protocols for securing the same.

IAM solutions can help meet GBLA through:

• Centralized Administration or Access Management
• Enforcement of Segregation of Duties (SoD)
• Access monitoring and modifications whenever required
• Revoking terminated access permissions
• Managing roles and access through the ‘least privilege’ principle
• Regular auditing of privileges and access rights
• Continuous tracking of account access for individuals

7) Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX)

This regulation applies to the BFSI sector and mandates that internal controls are implemented, tested, and documented for all activities involving financial information.

IAM solutions help meet these compliance requirements through:

• Centralized administration for managing access rights and authentication
• Strict enforcement of SoD policies
• Managing access rights upon changes
• Revoking terminated access rights
• Performing audits on access and rights at regular intervals

ALSO READ | Best Practices for Identity and Access Management (IAM)

In Conclusion

Veritis IAM solutions and services can help you comply with many globally-reputed compliance frameworks, setting a standard for your organizational information security posture. We have served many Fortune 500 firms in the US IT industry for more than a decade.

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