The world around us is constantly changing. What we knew as normal is suddenly a rarity while new things are becoming the new normal.
We are continually facing challenges owing to natural calamities, human-made problems, and diseases.
The recent pandemic has compelled us to work remotely, and that has brought forth more challenges.
One of the significant challenges faced by most today is that of identity and security. It is necessary as a service provider and as a consumer to secure our identity, hence Identity-as-a-Service.
IDaaS is Identity-as-a-Service. It is useful to provide access to people looking to access and operate on files and data available on the Cloud, but are connected remotely.
If someone was to access some files on a server and they were on-site, their identity would be verified before receiving access to the facility.
With remote access being the current norm, there is a challenge to ensure identity authenticity. This is so that data is protected from potential breaches.
IDaaS solutions help verify the person accessing the files on the server/Cloud.
There are many ways of ensuring that the right person is accessing the documents. In case the authentication fails, the person is denied access. This keeps the data secure at all times.
Many vendors provide IDaaS. If you are looking for an Identity-as-a-Service provider, here is a small checklist that can help you:
- The IDaaS vendor must provide services from the Cloud. This helps keep the cost of setting up the entire infrastructure for IDaaS in check. It also helps keep the setup scalable in case you wish to expand or reduce the IDaaS operation.
- They should be able to provide a host of features that are necessary for your organization. Moreover, it is better to be able to select which features you want and only pay for them. This further helps reduce costs.
- The Identity-as-a-Service provider must be stable and have enough financial footing to ensure that they can run a sustainable operation for a considerable period. They must also have an excellent geographical reach to provide you service from anyplace globally.
- Ensure that the vendor's solution is a good match for your organization, and it is compatible. In case it is not, you have to invest further in more resources to match the compatibility and ensure that it all integrates well.
- Their support must be existent and efficient. In case of any issues, they must be available to be contacted and resolve the issue at the earliest. In case of problems, if any delays are caused due to it, then the impending losses can be substantial.
Following is a list of the top 10 IDaaS providers as of 2020:
IBM Identity and Access Management (IAM) is the company's IDaaS offering for businesses. It is a cloud-based offering that promises easy access provision, cost reduction, and quick deployment.
IBM IAM provides multiple features, including Multifactor Authentication, Single Sign-On, User Lifecycle Management, and many more.
The solution comes with multiple interfaces – for employees and customers. The solution was named a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant 2019 and used by many retail customers.
You can contact IBM for more information and the cost of IBM IAM.
Azure Active Directory (AD) is Microsoft's IDaaS offering. It is cloud-based and provides a host of features.
AD was rated as one of the most holistic IDaaS solutions and a Gartner Magic Quadrant leader in 2020. It uses Machine Learning to detect any malicious activities.
Azure AD provides a robust, secure, and convenient solution to support all your apps and identities.
Microsoft is offering unlimited single sign-on and multifactor identifications with Azure AD for free. You can contact them for pricing details for their complete offering.
Okta provides a new way of IDaaS, which is different from other players. It uses its proprietary technology, which helps them provide an edge over the competition.
They have two interfaces to their solution, for the workforce and for the customers.
Some of the main features that they provide include Single Sign-on, Multifactor authentication, Lifecycle Management, Access Gateway, API access management, and many more.
They have different plans based on the number of users and features opted for. Their plans are starting as low as $2 per user per month.
Workspace ONE Access is VMware's Identity-as-a-Service offering, which was earlier known as VMware Identity Manager.
It provides conditional access, single sign-on, and multifactor authentication to SaaS, web, and native mobile applications. The offering from VMware is Cloud-based and has Risk-based conditional access.
It includes fast onboarding of new applications and functions on zero trust access. For more information about WorkSpace ONE Access and pricing, you can reach out to VMware directly.
Also Read: Top 7 Multi-Factor Authentication Examples
PingOne is PingIdentity's IDaaS offering for both Enterprise and Customers. It is an efficient offering for enterprises since it is cloud-based fast and easy to use.
PingOne provides many features: Single Sign-on, Access Security, Multifactor identification, API Security, Data Governance, and Directory.
You can reach out to PingIdentity for a demo of their offering and more information on the pricing and implementation for your organization.
OneLogin is an IDaaS offering vendor with its own platform for offering various services and features. It has integrations with over 6,000 applications.
Their feature offerings include a unified directory, Single Sign-on, app catalog, API provisioning, Adaptive authentication, and Mobile identity.
OneLogin pricing varies based on the chosen plan. The advanced plan starts from $4 per user per month for a limited set of features. The extensive plan with all the features included starts at $8 per user per month.
Ipsidy helps reduce chances of fraud and minimize risk with their biometric identification and IDaaS service.
You can simply log in to their Identity-as-a-Service solution to send mobile identification request to your employees and even your customers.
Some of its features include verified customer identity for risk minimization, biometric authentication, verified customer consent, and many more.
Ipsidy provides services such as identity management, visitor management, remote user onboarding, KBA replacement, etc.
You can contact Ipsidy for more information on their products and pricing.
Ubisecure helps how their customers utilize and engage with digital services. Their solution enforces SSO to consolidate identities for their remote users with a single set of credentials to log in and out of your applications. You can also add a second layer of security by enabling mobile-based multifactor authentication and OTP.
It ensures that your employees are not distracted and can concentrate on and launch apps faster. It also provides security and reliability.
Their 30-day free trial offers you certain but limited functionality such as identity proofing, authorization, and authentication. You can contact them for more information regarding their plans.
Cloud Identity is an IDaaS solution by Google that manages your users and groups centrally. With cloud identity, you can manage access and compliance over all the accounts that come under your domain.
Cloud Identity secures your accounts with single sign-on and helps secure your accounts against phishing with threat signals and multifactor authentication.
It also enables employees to manage all their third-party apps as well in one place. You can create, update, and delete your profiles in one central location, and the same will be reflected in your cloud apps. Cloud Identity works with many cloud applications such as box, DocuSign, Marketo, Dropbox, etc.
Cloud Identity subscription costs $6/month per user. Their technical support team is available to the users in 14 different languages, 24*7.
An IDaaS solution by Oracle, Oracle Identity Cloud Service (IDCS), is available to Oracle Public Cloud users.
It helps automate SaaS and Paas provisioning and de-provisioning. IDCS helps automate the security, compliance, and all IDM activities for the enterprises irrespective of where the organization is in their cloud journey.
IDCS provides easy and synchronized user provisioning across Cloud and on-premise services. It enforces a zero-trust strategy and implements single sign-on, multifactor authentication, and strong password enforcement in their access policies.
You can try out IDCS for a 30-day trial period along with Oracle Cloud. You can get in touch with Oracle for more information on the plans.
Conclusion
If the aforementioned points are fulfilled by the vendor, it can be safe to proceed with them. In case there are multiple vendors that fit your criterion, then you can always take a call based on other factors such as cost, customer experience and so on.
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