Personal smart phones and tablets have invaded the business landscape. Ten years ago, companies discourage their employees to bring and use personal gadgets at work due to the threat to the corporate network. However, as businesses and not to mention client relations are increasingly becoming mobile, the explosion of the use of personal devices becomes inevitable.
Employee’s personal gadgets access corporate email, websites, team sites and systems that are the heart of business. Due to countless ways to access the corporate intranet, the question now of security most especially on cloud-based applications arises. How effective are small to mid-sized businesses in enforcing access security to its employees regardless corporate sites access method? How businesses using SharePoint can effectively protect their sites against threats?
Identity Management (IdM) in SharePoint 2013
Identity Management in SharePoint Server 2013 Enterprise, Standard and Foundation are composed of entities identifiers, storage location, trust relationships and display of identifier information.
SharePoint entities are made of users, groups, services, computers and apps. These entities are managed through Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS). AD DS is central to identity management because it provides a fully integrated security through logon authentication and access control. It provides a single network log-on were administrators can easily manage directory data and organization network wide.
SharePoint also has the capability to use forms based authentication or Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) to validate account credentials and provide account attributes to entities that requests authentication.
Its authentication method uses a security token which contains attributes like a security group where a particular user for instance belongs. In effect, a fully secure log-in with roles based controls can be implemented. This prevents unauthorized users to gain access to certain parts of the site which is only meant for executives or finance for instance.
Implementing Identity Management for your Business
Without the right identity management solution, it is difficult for companies to have a fully secured system. SharePoint 2013 uses advanced technology of AD DS to make sure employees regardless of any device, machine or network access undergo the same validation and security as if they are working on-site.
Our technical team at Portal Integrators can give you more tips in implementing your own IdM. Contact us to know more.
