©2022 SecureLink. All rights reserved.
Managing third-party identities is – quite simply – complex. It’s typically done through an organization’s Active Directory or identity and access management (IAM) system that’s designed for internal employee use, not to manage third-party identities. Consequently, organizations struggle to identify, manage, and monitor all third-party identities and are often faced with the onerous decision of sacrificing either security or efficiency.
Should an organization choose security, it ends up spending valuable time creating and managing individual accounts for every technician, plus layering in multi-factor authentication for each login attempt. Considering that on average, an organization shares data with 583 third parties, you can see how managing the individual accounts of reps from each of those 583 third parties becomes a time-sucking nightmare. In fact, we’ve found that companies spend an average of 2,000 hours per year just managing third-party accounts and access.
These tools also don’t provide visibility into employee hiring and firing at the third-party vendor, forcing organizations to rely on the third party to inform them of these changes, which rarely happens. Furthermore, even though companies will do their best to enforce the use of individual accounts, 59% of organizations are still ineffective in preventing third parties from sharing usernames and passwords, leaving huge gaps in security. So while organizations may try to optimize the security of their systems and processes, it can remain incredibly time-consuming and burdensome for them to manage, as well as leave notable security gaps open.
On the flip side, if an organization opts for efficiency over security, they could create account-level credentials to be shared among individual reps who need third-party access. While this process is much more efficient and easier to manage, it assumes an implicit trust with the third party, with no ability to identify and hold individuals accountable for their activity – a hacker’s dream scenario. Without identity verification or monitoring, a bad actor could sneak into a network undetected for who knows how long, causing all kinds of damage. This is also a compliance issue; regulatory requirements dictate that organizations need to know the individuals who are in their network so they can tie network activity back to that individual.
So, what’s it going to be? Security or efficiency?
With SecureLink, you don’t have to choose. SecureLink’s third-party identity and access management solution is specifically designed for the third party use case. Each individual third-party rep has his/her own account with multi-factor authentication built in to verify their identity and eliminate the problem of credential sharing. The authentication process also verifies the current employment status of each individual rep and confirms that the rep has a valid need to be accessing an organization’s systems. Each account also has time-based provisioning to ensure that accounts don’t remain active if they should be expired.
SecureLink not only solves the common security issues of employment status verification, shared credentials, and expired accounts that are mistakenly left active, but it’s also streamlined, efficient, and easy to manage. On average, customers see an 80% reduction in time spent managing third-party accounts and a 90% reduction in time spent troubleshooting account issues.
The proof is in the numbers. With SecureLink, securely and efficiently manage third-party identities.
IAM Solution
Managing third-party remote access has drastically changed over the years, and it’s important now more than ever to secure that access and restrict it to only those who need it. As companies rely more and more on third parties to handle critical business functions, it’s essential that they know and track who is accessing their system, why they’re accessing it, and when they’re accessing it. Learn more on why third-party identity management is crucial for organizational security and the elements required for an effective IAM solution.
| Individual accounts | Every third-party individual has their own account with their own credentials managed in SecureLink and outside of your Active Directory |
| Multi-factor authentication | Eliminate shared login risks by confirming the identity of the individual with multi-factor authentication via any TOTP application, email, or SMS |
| Self-registration | Allow individuals to self-register for their own user accounts, and send the approval request directly to the third-party owner without needing IT involvement |
| Employment verification | Ensure that the individuals requesting access to your network are currently employed by the third party and have a valid reason for access |
| Time-based account provisioning and deprovisioning | Upon account creation, verify that the account is active for only when needed - whether a few hours or weeks - and set parameters for automatic account deprovisioning |
Why Choose SecureLink
Learn more about SecureLink’s complete solution that also manages network access, audits all third-party activity, and helps meet compliance with regulatory requirements.
© 2022 SecureLink. All Rights Reserved | Privacy Policy | License Agreement | Security Disclosure
