IAM concepts

Identity and Access Management (IAM) concepts cover the policies, processes, and tools used to manage digital identities and regulate user access to resources. Key IAM principles include authentication, authorization, provisioning, and least privilege. Effective IAM ensures that the right users have the right access at the right time.

Categories:

Password Generator

IAM concepts

A tool provided by password managers to create strong, randomized passwords that are difficult to guess or crack. Password generators typically allow users to specify criteria such as length, character types, and special symbols to customize generated passwords.

Key Rotation

IAM concepts

The process of regularly changing cryptographic keys or credentials to mitigate the risk of unauthorized access and improve security. Secrets managers often automate key rotation to ensure that secrets are regularly updated without disrupting applications or services.

Password Manager

IAM concepts

A software tool or service designed to securely store, manage, and retrieve passwords and other sensitive information, such as usernames, credit card numbers, and notes. Password managers often encrypt data using strong cryptographic algorithms to protect against unauthorized access.

Identity Mapping

IAM concepts

The process of correlating user identities across different identity domains or systems. Identity mapping ensures that users are consistently identified and authenticated, regardless of the authentication mechanism or system used.

Identity Governance and Administration (IGA)

IAM concepts

IGA is the framework and processes used to ensure that the right individuals and machines have the appropriate access to technology resources. It integrates identity lifecycle management (provisioning, deprovisioning) with governance processes (e.g., auditing, role management, policy enforcement) to ensure compliance, security, and efficiency in managing identities.

Identity and Access Management (IAM)

IAM concepts

A framework for managing and controlling access to resources, systems, and data based on the identities of users, machines, or services.

Group Policy

IAM concepts

A feature used in IAM systems, especially in Active Directory environments, to manage and configure the settings of user and machine identities across an organization.

Service Provider (SP)

IAM concepts

A system, application, or service that relies on an identity provider for authentication and authorization. Service providers accept identity tokens or assertions from the IdP to grant access to their resources or functionalities.

Security Token Service (STS)

IAM concepts

STS (such as AWS Security Token Service) is a cloud service that provides temporary, limited-privilege credentials for authenticated users or workloads. These tokens allow access to resources for a specific duration, reducing the need for long-term credentials and improving security.

SPIFFE (Secure Production Identity Framework for Everyone)

IAM concepts

SPIFFE is an open-source framework for providing secure, cryptographic identities to services and workloads in dynamic, distributed systems like microservices. It defines standards for identity creation, verification, and lifecycle management across different cloud and infrastructure environments.