Glossary / Identity Continuity
Identity Continuity
What is the definition of identity continuity?
Identity continuity, also known as identity resilience or IAM resilience, is the ability to maintain uninterrupted and secure access to digital resources even in the face of disruptions, changes, or attacks. It ensures that users can continue to access the applications and data they need, regardless of changes in their context, device, location, or the underlying identity infrastructure.
Think of it as the ability to seamlessly switch between backup keys if your primary key is lost or broken. Identity continuity ensures that you can still unlock the doors you need to, even if the lock has changed or the key itself is temporarily unavailable.
Continuity vs resilience
Identity continuity and resilience are closely related but not the same.
- Identity continuity refers specifically to ensuring uninterrupted and secure access to systems, applications, and data, even during disruptions such as system upgrades, outages, or security incidents. It focuses on maintaining seamless authentication and authorization processes so that users can continue working without interruption.
- Resilience, on the other hand, is a broader concept that encompasses an organization’s ability to withstand, recover from, and adapt to various disruptions, whether they are technical failures, cyberattacks, operational challenges, or business changes like mergers or regulatory shifts.
While identity continuity is a key component of resilience—ensuring that users maintain access even during disruptions—resilience extends beyond identity and access management to include overall business continuity, disaster recovery, and adaptability to change. Essentially, identity continuity supports resilience, but resilience covers a wider range of organizational stability and adaptability measures.
Why identity continuity matters
Identity continuity is essential for maintaining productivity, enhancing security, improving user experience, supporting compliance, and enabling business resiliency. In today’s fast-paced digital world, any disruption to access can significantly impact business operations. Ensuring identity continuity allows users to remain productive even during system upgrades, outages, or security incidents.
It also plays a critical role in security by enabling continuous authentication and authorization, allowing organizations to respond in real-time to security events such as compromised accounts or policy changes.
Additionally, identity continuity enhances the user experience by providing consistent and uninterrupted access across different contexts and devices, reducing frustration and improving overall satisfaction. From a compliance standpoint, it helps organizations meet regulatory requirements related to data security, privacy, and access management by ensuring that access controls remain enforced, even during disruptions.
Moreover, identity continuity contributes to business resiliency by allowing organizations to quickly adapt to changes such as mergers, acquisitions, or new initiatives without disrupting user access.
Challenges to having uninterrupted access to identity services
Maintaining having uninterrupted access to identity services can be challenging due to several factors, especially as organizations navigate increasingly complex digital environments. With the rapid adoption of cloud computing, hybrid work models, and diverse identity providers, ensuring seamless and secure access across multiple systems has become more difficult than ever.
- Diverse Identity Systems: Organizations often rely on a variety of identity systems, including on-premises directories, cloud-based identity providers, and legacy applications, making it difficult to maintain a consistent view of user identities.
- Dynamic User Contexts: User contexts are constantly changing, with users accessing resources from different devices, locations, and networks. This makes it challenging to maintain secure and seamless access.
- Security Threats: Cyberattacks, such as phishing, malware, and denial-of-service attacks, can disrupt identity systems and compromise user accounts, threatening identity continuity.
- Technology Evolution: The rapid pace of technological change can make it difficult to keep identity systems up-to-date and ensure compatibility with new applications and devices.
In addition to these challenges, operating in environments characterized by Disrupted, Degraded, Intermittent, and Low-Bandwidth (DDIL) conditions presents unique obstacles. As Eric Olden, CEO of Strata Identity, explains, “In DDIL environments, robust, resilient solutions are required to address the challenges brought about by defense scenarios.”
To overcome these challenges, organizations can implement Identity Orchestration solutions that integrate and manage diverse identity systems, ensuring seamless and secure access across various environments. By adopting such strategies, businesses can enhance their resilience and maintain operational continuity even in the face of evolving threats and technological advancements.
Best practices for maintaining identity continuity
Maintaining identity continuity is crucial for ensuring seamless and secure access to organizational resources. To achieve this, organizations should consider the following best practices:
- Implement a Zero Trust approach: Assume that no user or device is inherently trustworthy. Enforce strict access controls and continuous authorization to verify every access attempt.
- Use strong authentication: Deploy multi-factor authentication (MFA) and other robust methods to protect against account compromises.
- Monitor user behavior: Utilize User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) and other analytics tools to detect anomalies and suspicious activities.
- Develop incident response plans: Create comprehensive strategies to address identity-related security incidents, ensuring continuity of access during disruptions.
- Stay informed: Keep abreast of the latest threats, vulnerabilities, and best practices in identity management to proactively address emerging challenges.
Identity Continuity software allows organizations to manage and streamline authentication and authorization processes across various systems, ensuring that identity services remain operational even during disruptions.
By adopting these strategies, organizations can build a resilient identity infrastructure that maintains seamless and secure access, even in the face of evolving threats and technological advancements.
Downtime isn’t an option when identity is the front door to your enterprise. Learn how you can prevent interruptions from IDP outages before they impact your users—ensuring secure, uninterrupted access to critical applications and data. Learn how to ensure Uninterrupted Access with Identity Continuity™