Every day new digital apps, tools, and other products enter the market. These products all require authentication, different privileges, multi-factor authentication, IP/location-based access, and more—all from a single sign-on.
The problem? Different suppliers from around the world make these digital products, making single sign-on a challenge. That's where Identity as a Service (IDaaS) comes in.
Organizations can use IDaaS to authenticate team members and provide access to the apps, tools, and networks only to those who need it.
TeamPassword's password manager allows small businesses to share credentials with team members securely. Sign up for a 14-day free trial to try TeamPassword with your team today!
Breaking Down Identity as a Service (IDaaS)
Organizations often use multiple networks, environments, tools, applications, and more, each with different languages and complexities. IDaaS is a cloud-based identity and access management (IAM) solution bridging the gap between these platforms while providing a single sign-on and authentication service.
Additionally, IDaaS might also include:
- Monitoring, analytics, and reporting
- Systems/network integration
- Access privileges
- Security tools
- Provisioning
- Directory administration
- VPN authentication
- Multi-device authentication - authenticating a user's laptop, phone, and tablet
- Time-based authentication - users can only log in during specific hours or for a limited period
- OTP - one-time password (via text or email)
- App-based authentication - Google Authenticator or custom solution
- Biometrics - fingerprint, facial recognition
- USB password key
- Location/IP-based sign in - can only sign in from a particular location or IP address
An excellent example of IDaaS many people use every day is Google's GSuite. By signing into your GSuite account, you have access to all Google's services, including Gmail, Drive, Calendar, Google Cloud Platform, and a host of third-party applications.
A GSuite administrator can manage each user's privileges, manage apps/integrations/workspaces, manage devices, directories, and much more.
How Can Businesses Benefit From IDaaS?
IDaaS solves many productivity and security issues for businesses. It fosters scalability while minimizing onboarding and training.
IDaaS is also crucial in today's remote work environment, where employees often access sensitive data outside of company networks, often from outside the country!
Primary IDaaS benefits:
- Cloud-based means that IDaaS is quick and cost-effective to deploy. Eliminating the need for costly on-site infrastructure
- A centralized authentication eliminates credential management, thus reducing password vulnerabilities
- Increases an organization's security with superior control and monitoring
- Provides safety for employees, stakeholders, service providers, and end-users
- Reduces cybersecurity vulnerabilities and mitigates many common cyberattacks
- Improves productivity as team members can easily navigate between systems focusing on the task at hand, not password management and authentication
- Fosters safer, more productive environments for remote teams
- Legislation compliance - GDPR, CCPA, etc
What Kind of Businesses Can Benefit From IDaaS?
Traditionally, IDaaS was only available at the enterprise level. But as the technology evolves, IDaaS is more affordable and widely used by big and small companies.
Many small businesses use Google's Gsuite or Zoho, which offer affordable IDaaS solutions—but lack the customization, authentication options, and advanced analytics you find in an enterprise IDaaS.
Still, large companies with multiple networks, environments, applications, and digital services benefit most from IDaaS by solving many productivity and security issues.
IDaaS is most effective for companies that require authentication for users inside and outside of the organization. For example, employees, service providers, and customers. Each user will have different access and privileges.
Some examples of companies that most often use IDaaS:
- Social media companies
- Insurance companies
- Multinational organizations
- Financial institutions
- SaaS companies
- Utility services
- Government services and agencies
- Travel agencies and airlines
A password manager or hybrid SSO/password management solution offers affordable security for companies with small teams (up to 50 employees) while mitigating many cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
What are the Components of IDaaS?
Single Sign-On
Single sign-on is one of the core benefits of IDaaS. With single sign-on, every member can access the tools, networks, and services using one set of credentials, usually via a custom corporate dashboard.
This single sign-on increases productivity while mitigating password and multi-entry point vulnerabilities—thus making life easier for security teams and more difficult for attackers.
Multi-Factor Authentication
Multi-factor authentication is another significant IDaaS benefit. IDaaS also provides the flexibility to integrate several types of multi-factor authentication for different access levels and users.
For example, low-level support staff might require basic two-factor authentication. In contrast, financial teams or IT staff need more sophisticated, multi-step authentication like a combination of biometrics, an OTP, and a USB security key.
IDaaS allows companies to use many authentication methods and apply varying authentication to different teams.
Cybersecurity professionals divide multi-factor authentication into three categories:
- Inheritance: biometric authentication methods
- Possession: device authentication methods
- Knowledge: password/secret code or phrase authentication methods
Multi-factor authentication aims to verify the person's identity logging in with the highest level of certainty possible. It also mitigates the possibility of attackers accessing the company's system simply by stealing a team member's credentials.
Directory Administration
IDaaS offers secure and scalable cloud directory solutions for employees, customers, and partners. IDaaS allows organizations to store sensitive identity and authentication data separately while providing secure access to applications and systems when required.
This IDaaS directory administration plays a crucial role in separating sensitive company data from identity information—minimizing the fallout in the event of a data breach.
Provisioning
Provisioning plays a crucial role in providing user identification across multiple applications and systems. IDaaS achieves this through SCIM or System for Cross-Domain Identity Management. SCIM also helps to remove any user from all systems when they no longer need it—like an employee leaving the company, a service provider's contract ending or terminating a customer's services.
Access Management
IDaaS uses secure, controlled access management to provide users with access to a company's digital assets and resources—often simplifying the integrations for legacy systems and modern infrastructure through custom APIs and cloud-based software.
Secure Authentication for Small Businesses
The most significant cybersecurity vulnerability is password management. Passwords are the keys to a company's networks, and data, so effective credential management is crucial!
For most small businesses, IDaaS and SSO solutions are simply unaffordable. But these businesses still need to protect company, client, and user data just like any other large corporation.
A secure password manager like TeamPassword is the answer to secure authentication for small businesses. TeamPassword offers an affordable solution for small businesses and agencies to share and manage credentials securely.
Single Sign-On With TeamPassword
While TeamPassword isn't an SSO application, it does keep all your company passwords centralized and locked inside a secure password manager. With all your passwords in one place, team members only need one password—their TeamPassword credentials!
Once logged in, employees use TeamPassword as a key to access email, messaging apps, social media accounts, email marketing, productivity tools, and more.
Team members can use TeamPassword for shared and individual credentials, so you have complete control over everyone's access to company assets.
Sharing Access Securely
Many small businesses still share raw credentials via email, spreadsheets, or messaging apps. This sharing method exposes many security vulnerabilities, and companies have no way to control unauthorized sharing and access.
With TeamPassword, companies create groups to share access with internal teams, contractors, clients, and other stakeholders. You can add and remove team members to any group with a single click—giving you complete access control to all of your company's digital assets and systems.
TeamPassword is especially useful for agencies with multiple clients and hundreds of accounts to manage. You can manage every client and account in one place, under a single TeamPassword plan.
Easy Access for Desktop & Mobile
Teams can use TeamPassword's browser extensions (Chrome, Firefox, Safari) or mobile app (iOS & Android) to log in to company accounts.
If you have multiple accounts for the same platform, like Twitter, TeamPassword allows you to name each one separately, so employees can quickly search for the correct credentials.
TeamPassword's browser extensions will autocomplete username and password fields for quick access to desktop services, while the mobile app allows users to copy/paste credentials to access mobile-only applications.
Secure Password Generator
One of the biggest challenges for companies is enforcing strong passwords and preventing team members from reusing passwords. The reason employees practice these unsecure habits is because they have too many passwords to remember.
With TeamPassword, team members no longer have to remember any password (except for their TeamPassword credentials, of course), so you can create long, random, unique passwords for every account.
TeamPassword's built-in secure password generator lets you create passwords from 12-32 characters using numbers, letters (uppercase/lowercase), and symbols. When you save or reset a password, TeamPassword updates these credentials for all users.
Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)
TeamPassword features two-factor authentication through Google Authentication (available on iOS and Android). Each team member can also download security codes, so they're never locked out of their TeamPassword account.
Activity Log and Email Notifications
TeamPassword's activity log and email notification system allows you to monitor user access and quickly identify suspicious activity. You can set up email notifications for all TeamPassword activities, including logins, new passwords, credential deletions, sharing access, and more.
Try TeamPassword for Free
TeamPassword offers a free 14-day free trial so that you can test our password manager with your team. Secure your company's assets and take control of password management with TeamPassword today!
