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What is IAM for the Cloud?

Release Date: 07/12/2023

Working Group: Identity and Access Management

The purpose of this document is to provide an understanding of the challenges and considerations involved in managing Identity and Access Management (IAM) in the cloud, as well as the importance of IAM to an organization's overall security strategy.

Traditionally, IAM was intended as a general purpose mechanism to restrict and control access to enterprise resources by granting permissions to users or groups or users. The goal was entitlement, not so much control, and access was based entirely on assertions of username and password, coupled with group membership or permissions directly assigned at the resource. This model later evolved to centralize IAM, and access decisions were concentrated centrally at an authority such as a service, server, or Identity infrastructure. The threat landscape has materially changed over the years, and today, IAM is a core component of any digital access model. It evolves to employ ever-increasing visibility, granularity, and control as the nature of users, resources, and systems change.

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Acknowledgements

Heinrich Smit

Governance, Risk & Compliance at Semperis

Heinrich Smit

Governance, Risk & Compliance at Semperis

Heinrich is a recognized Information Protection and Zero Trust expert who started out in Law, and pivoted to his love of technology during the Tech Boom. He has led teams at software innovators and large financial institutions, has authored entire Information Security Policy stores, and has protected data at both 280,000 seat regulated enterprises and SAAS-based startup unicorns. He is passionate about Privacy and Zero Trust, as well as Def...

Shruti Kulkarni

Cyber Security Architect at 6point6

Shruti Kulkarni

Cyber Security Architect at 6point6

I am a security professional with experience across various domains of security. I work in defining organisation’s security strategy, security architecture and security practices. Translating business objectives and risk management strategies into specific security processes enabled by security technologies and services. I work on gap analysis, design, implementation and...