One of the biggest misconceptions in cloud security is the perception that identity management (IDaaS) and access management (SSO) are the same thing.
They’re not.
And it took a viewing of the famous Star Trek episode called Mirror Mirror for me to best illustrate and articulate the difference between the creation and management of a user account and credentialed rights and the funneled applications that entity is allowed to see. For those unfamiliar with the episode, it’s the one where Kirk is transported into an alternate universe and meets evil Spock (the one with the beard)…but more about that soon.
Simply, IDaaS is the administrative function that creates and maintains a user’s network identity. It segments their privileges by roles and rules. This is called provisioning. Your starship just hired a new lieutenant to communicate with new life and new civilizations as you boldly go places—in this world we call it inside sales, but you get the idea. In the organizational hierarchy, this officer needs access to certain functions and applications-but not others. So when her “enterprise” identity is created, she is assigned certain access rights. She needs to see the languages database, but not the weapons console.