Identity Continuity and IDP security

Identity is at the core of everything in a modern enterprise today. To access any application, data, or system, you’ll need to do so through your identity provider (IDP). Cloud IDPs are essentially the “front door” to all of a company’s cloud applications. If the primary IDP fails, it doesn’t matter if all those apps are alive and healthy; the user simply can’t access them when the primary cloud IDP is offline.

Outages to identity services, planned or unplanned, are inevitable and can lead to significant operational setbacks and IAM security vulnerabilities.  In the past, IT and security leaders have focused on minimizing the risk caused downtime of these interruptions through disaster and recovery. Yet, recovery still means significant cost to rebuild and any time when security functions are not in place is a huge risk. 

This is where Identity Continuity is so important; it offers a simple solution to the complex problem of maintaining seamless access even during IDP interruptions.

What is Identity Continuity?

Identity Continuity is a modern approach to keeping users connected to the applications they need — even if an identity provider (IDP) or another identity service goes offline. It builds on your existing identity infrastructure, enabling automatic failover between IDPs without interrupting access.

By integrating multiple IDPs, whether cloud-based or on-premises, Identity Continuity helps create a more resilient and flexible identity environment. When something goes wrong with one service, another can step in instantly, keeping access smooth and secure.

Why Identity Continuity is so important 

Organizations rely on identity providers (IDPs) to authenticate users and grant them access to critical systems and applications. But no IDP is perfect — outages can occur for many reasons, including cyberattacks, misconfigurations, infrastructure failures, or even routine maintenance. 

When an IDP goes down, businesses are up against significant setbacks, like employees being locked out of essential tools and customers losing access to online services. Without a continuity plan, recovery efforts can be time-consuming and costly, which only exacerbates the impact of the outage.

Identity Continuity eliminates disruptions by allowing users to maintain secure and uninterrupted access to their applications — even when an IDP is temporarily unavailable. By integrating multiple IDPs — whether cloud-based or on-premises — organizations can build a more resilient identity infrastructure that prevents single points of failure.

How Identity Continuity works

Identity Continuity works by adding enhanced capabilities to an existing identity fabric (built through orchestration), to allow for IAM failover from one identity provider to another without interruption. It’s not about replacing anything in your current IAM environment; rather, it adds a layer of protection that ensures access and security remain steady even during outages.

It encompasses a comprehensive approach that integrates multiple identity providers (IDPs), both cloud-based and on-premises, to create a resilient identity infrastructure. Here’s how Identity Continuity keeps businesses running smoothly.

Automatic failover. If a primary IDP becomes unavailable, the system automatically switches to a backup IDP without disrupting user access or compromising security. For example, a global retail company experiencing an IDP outage during a peak sales period shifts authentication to a secondary IDP and avoids lost revenue and frustrated customers.

Consistent authentication and authorization. Ensures that authentication and access control policies remain intact, even in the event of an IDP failure. A real-life scenario would be if a financial institution maintains seamless customer logins to online banking services by enforcing consistent authentication policies across multiple IDPs.

Downtime prevention. Reduces operational setbacks by eliminating reliance on manual recovery processes during outages. Imagine the immense benefit for a healthcare provider being able to prevent disruptions to patient portal access by implementing automated IDP failover so that doctors can retrieve medical records without delays no matter what. 

Improved security posture. Protects against vulnerabilities that could be exploited when IDPs experience downtime to increase access security. For example, a government agency prevents unauthorized access attempts during an IDP outage by requiring secondary authentication methods and fallback IDP verification.

These features help maintain trust in your identity infrastructure and provide the reliability users expect. By leveraging automated failover strategies, Identity Continuity can create a resilient gateway for enterprise applications and data.

Use cases for Identity Continuity

Continuity’s processes are crucial for modern hybrid architectures that rely heavily on both cloud and on-premises systems.

Multi-vendor IDP failover

In a multi-vendor IDP failover setup, organizations use multiple identity providers from different vendors. The diversity here mitigates the risk of any single vendor’s system failure. For example, if an organization’s primary IDP on AWS experiences an outage, the system can automatically switch to a secondary IDP hosted on Azure. 

Cloud IDP to on-premises IDP failover

Hybrid failover mechanisms are essential for organizations using cloud-based services and on-premises infrastructure. With this approach, if cloud IDP services are disrupted, there is an immediate and automatic switchover to on-premises systems. 

For example, suppose a cloud-based IDP is unavailable due to an internet outage. In that case, the organization can automatically revert to its on-premises Active Directory or other identity systems to continue providing authentication and access control services.

What are the challenges solved by having continuous IDP access?

Before the rise of Software as a Service (SaaS), achieving continuity in identity management was a significant challenge. Traditional on-premises IT infrastructures lacked the flexibility and scalability inherent to modern SaaS solutions. 

These systems were often siloed and hardware-dependent, making it difficult to implement the configurations required for effective IDP failover strategies. Plus, the cost and complexity of maintaining multiple redundant systems on-premises were prohibitive for many organizations.

With the shift towards digital transformation, organizations face various operational, security, and IAM compliance challenges that can disrupt essential services. Identity Continuity is designed to protect against these disruptions by ensuring uninterrupted identity and access management services.

Let’s explore the challenges that Identity Continuity addresses.

Sophisticated cybersecurity threats

The cyber threats landscape is skyrocketing, with attackers leveraging advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) to carry out complex and adaptive cyber attacks. These sophisticated methods are designed to bypass conventional IAM security measures, which poses a significant risk to systems and data.

High cost of downtime

Any downtime can be disastrous for finance, healthcare, and e-commerce industries. In many cases, downtime can be a case of life or death. Interruptions in identity services result in direct financial losses (sometimes in the millions or more), erode customer trust, and damage the organization’s reputation. Maintaining continuous identity operations is crucial for all sectors today, where even minimal downtime can have significant impacts.

Regulatory compliance pressures

Regulatory compliance frameworks such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), and various sector-specific regulations across the globe are ramping up the need for robust data privacy and security practices. These regulations require strict processes and controls to protect sensitive information and impose severe penalties for non-compliance. Navigating these compliance landscapes ramps up the complexity of already challenging operational environments.

Complex multi-cloud and hybrid environments

As organizations adopt more diversified IT infrastructures, including integrating multiple cloud IDP services with on-premises systems, the task of managing identity and access consistently across these environments becomes increasingly complex. Ensuring cohesive security policies and access controls across such varied landscapes is a persistent challenge.

What are the benefits of Identity Continuity? 

Implementing Identity Continuity offers numerous benefits. Below are the key issues that it solves. 

Proactive disruption management

By being proactive and defining continuity policies for each application, organizations can improve IAM resiliency and address potential disruptions before they happen. Each application is equipped with a designated backup IDP that can seamlessly take over if the primary IDP becomes unavailable. 

This strategy mitigates the impact of disruptions and ensures that user access and security are continuously maintained without frustration.

Let’s use a national retailer as an example. The retailer uses a cloud identity platform for point-of-sale operations. When a natural disaster disrupts internet access, Identity Continuity enables the retailer to automatically switch to a local backup in Active Directory to ensure uninterrupted service during this critical time.

Reduced downtime, increased confidence

The robust failover mechanisms inherent in Identity Continuity can significantly reduce downtime. Less downtime means less stress for IT teams and more stakeholder confidence, knowing that a well-tested backup plan is in place. Ultimately, this translates to trust and reliability in an organization’s digital services. 

Continuous application availability

With Identity Continuity, applications remain available regardless of the status of the primary IDP. Continuous identity availability is critical to ensure business operations don’t grind to a halt, leading to more sales, improved productivity, and a superior user experience. 

Consistent accessibility is especially crucial in industries where real-time data access and transaction capabilities are non-negotiable. 

Enhanced security through a composable identity fabric

Identity Continuity boosts security by allowing organizations to quickly swap infrastructure components without disruption. This level of flexibility is a key component of a resilient cybersecurity architecture and allows organizations to respond swiftly to threats and vulnerabilities as they arise.

Simplified compliance and reporting

Resilience in IAM simplifies identity compliance with evolving regulations such as the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) and NIST Cybersecurity Framework by providing clear, audit-ready reports and logs. These documentation capabilities make it easier for organizations to demonstrate their commitment to regulatory standards and operational best practices.

Real-time monitoring of IDP performance

An integral part of Identity Continuity is continuously monitoring an IDP’s performance and availability. With identity Continuity, organizations have real-time insights into which IDPs are operational, experiencing issues, or offline, allowing immediate response and adjustment to ensure uninterrupted service.

How is Identity Continuity different from disaster recovery?

Identity Continuity and traditional disaster recovery (DR) solutions can both play critical roles in organizational resilience planning. However, it’s important to understand they each address different aspects of identity resilience and operational continuity. Understanding these distinctions is key to implementing effective security and continuity strategies.

The main difference is this: Identity Continuity fundamentally shifts focus from recovery to prevention, whereas traditional disaster recovery strategies typically kick in after an incident has already disrupted services. DR aims to restore systems and data to their pre-disruption state. DR often still involves significant downtime, during which systems may be partially or completely unavailable. 

A good analogy: do you want a car with the best seat belts, airbags, and crumple zones so that you get hurt less (disaster recovery), or do you want one with accident avoidance software so you avoid the crash altogether? Identity Continuity leverages real-time monitoring and automated failover mechanisms to prevent service disruption in the first place. 

By maintaining seamless operations — even when cloud identity providers are unavailable for whatever reason — Identity Continuity eliminates the impact on users and business operations; effectively making recovery instantaneous and mostly imperceptible to the end user.

How is Identity Continuity different from “good enough” data and identity backup? 

The “good enough” approach generally meets minimum security and operational continuity standards by relying on basic redundancy and straightforward backup solutions. While this may be enough under normal circumstances, it leaves organizations vulnerable during sophisticated cyber attacks or complex technical failures. 

Identity Continuity goes above and beyond by integrating advanced identity management technologies and practices, such as multi-vendor and multi-region failovers, and sophisticated orchestration that can dynamically adapt to and mitigate unforeseen challenges.

Identity Continuity can also leverage region-to-region failover. Geographical diversification of IDP services ensures that regional issues — such as a data center outage or a localized natural disaster — do not impact the global availability of identity services. 

In multi-region IDP failover, identity services are duplicated across multiple data centers spread across different regions; if one region faces downtime, the system automatically routes authentication and authorization requests to the nearest operational region, maintaining service availability without user intervention.

In this regional failover scenario, say a company is using Okta. While they still want the ability to go from “Okta west” to “Okta east,” if Okta is having internal availability issues, what happens if Okta goes down altogether or if their network connection is cut and they can’t get to Okta? 

In both scenarios, single-vendor IDP regional availability isn’t good enough. You must be able to failover to another IDP vendor altogether or an on-premises identity backup.

How is Identity Continuity different from IAM resilience? 

IAM resilience focuses on enhancing the robustness of identity functions one at a time, such as strengthening authentication processes or authorization protocols. While important, this approach can be siloed, addressing components of IAM without a comprehensive strategy for operational continuity. 

What sets IAM resilience and IDP Continuity apart is that most identity resilience offerings provide backups of the policies and configuration settings of a single vendor IDP so that companies can rebuild things faster when they come back online. Resilience is not good enough here because, like the car crash analogy above, you simply minimize how badly you’ll get hurt vs. avoiding getting hurt all together.

Identity Continuity builds upon IAM Resilience by integrating these capabilities into a unified system that ensures the entire IAM landscape can sustain operations without interruption. Identity Continuity’s holistic approach provides security for individual identity functions while ensuring they collectively contribute to the continuous availability and security of the organization’s entire digital environment.

How to implement Identity Continuity

To implement Identity Continuity effectively, organizations should consider technologies and strategies that seamlessly transition between IDPs during outages. One modern approach is using an identity orchestration platform that abstracts identity management layers to allow applications to function independently of a single IDP.

Strata’s Maverics Identity Orchestration Platform offers a comprehensive solution for Identity Continuity. With Maverics, organizations get:

Health monitoring and failover: Continuous real-time monitoring of IDP availability with automated failover mechanisms that switch authentication traffic to a backup IDP when needed. For example, a multinational corporation uses real-time monitoring to detect a drop in authentication success rates, triggering an automatic switch to a backup IDP to keep employees productive.

Schema Abstraction Layer™: Provides seamless translation and mapping of user attributes between different IDPs, maintaining consistent access experiences. For example, a university enables smooth IDP transitions for students and faculty accessing online learning platforms across different campuses and cloud environments.

Continuity strategies: Customizable failover and failback workflows managed through an intuitive no-code interface. For example, a logistics company configures failback workflows to revert authentication requests to the primary IDP after outage resolution to minimize disruption to shipping operations.

Downtime simulation: Allows businesses to test and validate their Identity Continuity strategy by simulating IDP failures and assessing recovery processes. For example, a tech company runs quarterly IDP failure simulations to allow its security team to handle authentication disruptions without affecting end users.

With Maverics, organizations can future-proof their identity infrastructure and enhance their overall security posture and IDP security. 

Resilience to future-proof your identity management

By implementing Identity Continuity and leveraging advanced failover mechanisms, organizations can protect themselves against the most challenging disruptions. This proactive approach ensures that essential identity services remain uninterrupted, IAM compliance requirements are met confidently, and cybersecurity threats are managed proactively, preserving the trust and satisfaction of customers and stakeholders alike.

With Identity Continuity, you can prevent IDP inaccessibility and not just react to it. 

Use Identity Continuity by Strata to create your own ideal continuity system — built to support your processes your way. View our ready-to-deploy recipe for additional details – How to seamlessly failover from your cloud IDP to on-prem Active Directory (AD) to see how it works.