Identity and Access Management

Entities can be users, systems, applications, or processes, and identity and access management (IAM) consists of four foundational elements: identification, authentication, authorization, and accountability (IAAA). This chapter identifies each of the IAAA elements and how they can be configured and enforced, which forms the basis of many access control systems. Both logical and physical access measures are designed to restrict which users or systems can access specific assets like data in a system or valuables stored in a safe. Users in a federated identity management scheme can authenticate to any one system participating in the federation and are then granted access to other federated systems. Rather than developing custom methods for extending the IAM scheme to external entities, a third‐party identity as a service can provide native integration with both legacy systems and external or cloud‐based systems.