{"id":5311,"date":"2021-11-19T15:35:57","date_gmt":"2021-11-19T15:35:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.strata.io\/?p=5311"},"modified":"2023-10-15T22:29:23","modified_gmt":"2023-10-16T05:29:23","slug":"identity-orchestrations-the-recipe-to-tearing-down-identity-silos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.strata.io\/blog\/identity-fabric\/identity-orchestrations-the-recipe-to-tearing-down-identity-silos\/","title":{"rendered":"Connecting identity silos across multiple clouds"},"content":{"rendered":"
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”5275″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]Multiple clouds mean<\/span> multiple identity silos<\/span><\/a>. These silos don\u2019t talk to each other, creating fragmentation across the clouds. <\/span><\/p>\n When two or more applications need to work together across those silos, there\u2019s no seamless way to share identity data between them. Orchestration provides a way for identities on multiple clouds to work seamlessly together between applications.<\/span><\/p>\n Let\u2019s take a look at how Identity Orchestration works to resolve these complex multi-cloud <\/span>identity and access management (IAM) issues<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n The first issue to resolve is identity silos. The more clouds your organization uses, the more your identity silos proliferate. An <\/span>identity fabric<\/span><\/a> takes those silos and weaves the various identity technologies together \u2014 for example, user information, attributes, places to authenticate users, and ways to do authorization.<\/span><\/p>\n Think of an identity fabric like your kitchen. Inside your kitchen, you have all of your ingredients for baking. Depending on what it is you want to bake, you\u2019ll use specific ingredients \u2014 perhaps flour, yeast, salt, and water. By combining those ingredients, you can make artisan country bread. Combine other ingredients, and you can make rye bread or focaccia.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n An identity fabric is a common layer of all of the previously siloed identity workflows across multiple clouds that you can integrate. They might include authentication, access control, authorization, encryption, identity providers (IDPs), proxies, and more. The identity fabric assembles all of those elements together in a cohesive way.<\/span><\/p>\n But <\/span>assembling the identity silos<\/span><\/a> is only the first step. Multiple clouds use different sets of standards from one another, which means that identity silos don\u2019t play well together. So you need them to integrate in a cohesive way.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Related: <\/b>Why SSO is only part of multi-cloud identity<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n Typically, making <\/span>distributed identity silos<\/span><\/a> work with one another would involve a great deal of custom integration. This kind of effort is extremely labor-intensive and lengthy, pulling your vital resources off of their core responsibilities for months at a time. Custom integration also requires ongoing maintenance, patching, and upgrading.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n But with an <\/span>abstraction layer<\/span><\/a>, all of those elements of an identity fabric can work together without having to re-code. An abstraction layer resolves these issues by bringing the various elements together and integrating them together, even when they use different technologies and languages.<\/span><\/p>\n If the identity fabric is like your kitchen, an abstraction layer is like the island in your kitchen. When you bake bread, you only want the ingredients you need for that recipe. So you bring them all together within easy reach. Bakers and chefs call it <\/span>mise en place<\/span><\/i> \u2014 \u201cputting in place.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n By bringing all the ingredients together \u2014 and only the ingredients you need \u2014 you save time, reduce your workload, increase your efficiency and organization, and prevent errors. Once all of your ingredients are in place on your kitchen island, it\u2019s easy to work with them and integrate them together.<\/span><\/p>\n The abstraction layer also integrates applications that expect different technologies and languages. Like translating between metric measurements and the Imperial standard, the abstraction layer allows you to use two or more disparate protocols \u2014 for example, SAML on an app but OIDC on the cloud IdP.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The abstraction layer translates between standards and languages so that distributed systems can work together. The value of an abstraction layer normalizes everything so that it doesn\u2019t matter how the technologies are implemented \u2014 it acts as a common denominator for them.<\/span><\/p>\nIdentity fabric: Connecting silos across multiple clouds<\/b><\/h2>\n
Abstraction layer: Integrating the right identity elements<\/b><\/h2>\n