Identity Issues in Cloud Applications

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Cloud applications, software used in a utility model, introduces a new dimension in usability and scalability, but it also posses new challenges in identity and access management, among others.

Businesses that use applications such as Google Docs, WebEx, Salesforce among others have to understand and solve the challenge of user authentication and entitlement. How should an organization ensure that employees access only the data they are entitled to? How should an organization make sure all user data is synchronized among various systems? When a user leaves, how should they de-provision the accounts so all access privileges are revoked? And above all, how can organizations make sure that all this is done efficiently, so that the advantages of cloud systems are not undone by these new challenges?

Managing identities in the cloud efficiently is a growing challenge and given the exponential speed at which the users of these services grow, efficient identity management is imperative. Some of the challenges in the identity management are:

1. User Provisioning and Access Control: Companies face the most challenges when it comes to adding new users, and giving them limited amount of control. Not only is this time consuming, but it also required resources specifically dedicated to giving certain rights and access to accounts.

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2. Automating users: In addition to the challenge of access control, provisioning of new users also need to be automated in order to be really scalable. This is currently not the case in most environments, where provisioning and de-provisioning of users is not automated. This requires time and dedicated human capital to focus on just adding new accounts and deleting unused, old ones.

3. Multiple Environments: When multiple environments are added to the equation, user management is especially difficult. Try to imagine synchronising information on hundreds of thousands of accounts on a daily basis, only in order to keep account data up-to-date in multiple environments. What is required here is a real-time data synchronization service that will update the multiple environments as and when changes take place.

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4. Limiting Scalability: Cloud applications boast scalability as one of their main advantages, but in terms of identity management, this may not be true. In fact, the lack of automation and challenges of multiple environments as described above may lead to limiting the scalability of cloud applications. While the applications themselves might be immensely scalable, manual provisioning and de-provisioning of accounts may limit their instant usability.

5. Lack of Industry Standard: Cloud computing is a relatively new, albeit promising, industry. With anything new, challenges need to be overcome as they are implemented and scaled up. This is especially true in case of cloud applications, where each organization has its own set up and its own standard of synchronizing and provisioning data and user access management. The lack of such an industry standard poses considerable challenges that companies need to overcome in order to make efficient and full use of cloud applications.

Large companies such as Novell, are working on products that will help synchronize identities in multiple environments and automate the process of provisioning (giving users the access) and de-provisioning (revoking access). Identity Manager 4, the newest product from Novell claims that it will overcome the challenges currently posed in identity management. It’s a new product, and a promising one at that – perhaps such products can help towards a more standardized identity management solutions for companies.

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New products and industries take a considerable time in becoming “perfect”, but this is a journey rather than a destination. Cloud applications have already shown their promise; their usability and scalability is unparalleled. Overcoming these challenges are a question of “when?” rather than an “If”. For now, these challenges need to be focused on and overcome, in order to make cloud applications more perfect.