When it comes to identity governance, the ability to effectively model and understand complex relationships between identities, access permissions, and systems is crucial. To maintain a robust cybersecurity posture, organizations need a high level of visibility and agility to keep pace with the ever-evolving threat landscape.
This is where Gathid’s next-generation graph technology is transforming the way organizations approach identity governance.
What is Graph Technology?
Graph technology is a powerful tool for representing and analyzing complex networks of interconnected data. In the context of identity governance, graph databases enable organizations to model and visualize the intricate web of relationships between identities, access permissions, and systems.
Gathid’s Identity Graph seamlessly models data from any source whether on-premise or in the cloud, including those that are air-gapped, via a non-intrusive, one-way integration. It automatically creates a ‘digital twin’ of your identities and related access permissions illuminating every node—be it an account, permission level, physical facility, or operational technology access—and empowers you to zoom in on specific entities.
By providing a more intuitive and flexible way to represent and query disparate identity and access data, directed graph technology allows you to see your identities like never before.
Complex Relationship Analyses and Access Reporting
One of the key advantages of graph technology in identity governance is its ability to enable rapid analysis of inter-system access, at any level. With a graph-based approach, organizations can rapidly perform complex 360° relationship analyses, providing powerful insights into potential security and compliance risks. This analysis empowers security teams to proactively detect and remediate issues before they escalate into major incidents.
Role Mining
Another powerful application of graph technology in identity governance is its ability to supercharge the process of role mining. This involves analyzing user-to-resource relationships across an organization to identify common access patterns and define appropriate roles and permissions.
By leveraging graph algorithms to analyze these relationships at scale, organizations can implement robust role-based access control (RBAC) and/or attribute-based access (ABAC) policies and dynamically update them as roles, systems and or policies change over time. This not only reduces the risk of manual human error when deciding or reviewing role requirements, it also improves security ensuring that users have access to the resources they need to perform their job functions effectively, every day.
A Unified View of Identity
Directed Graph technology also enables organizations to gain comprehensive oversight of all systems, complementing and enhancing existing identity and access solutions. With a graph-based approach, organizations can easily integrate identity and access data from a wide range of sources, even including legacy and home-grown applications. This unified view of the identity and access landscape is critical for identifying and mitigating security risks that may otherwise go undetected.
Toxic Role Combinations
One of the most compelling use cases for graph technology in identity governance is the detection of toxic role combinations. This refers to situations where users have been granted access permissions that if used, would violate the principle of least privilege or create inter-system conflicts of interest. By analyzing the relationships between roles, permissions, and systems, graph-based solutions can quickly identify these toxic combinations and alert security teams to potential risks.
Graph technology also enables organizations to monitor access to critical infrastructure and sensitive data. By defining complex access policies and continuously analyzing access patterns, graph-based solutions can detect unauthorized access and anomalies, and proactively alert security teams to potential threats. This monitoring is essential for maintaining the security and integrity of an organization’s most valuable assets.
The Power of Graph Technology
As the digital landscape continues to evolve and the complexity of enterprise systems grows, the need for next-generation solutions in identity governance has never been greater. By embracing the power of graph technology, organizations can transform the way they manage identity and access, ensuring continuous compliance, mitigating security risks, and driving business value.
The future of identity governance lies in the ability to leverage advanced technologies like the Gathid Identity Graph to provide 360° visibility, enable proactive threat detection, and streamline identity and access management processes. As more organizations seek out more agile and intelligent solutions, graph technology is poised to play an increasingly critical role in the evolution of Identity and Access Management.
Schedule a demo today to see graph technology in action.
