What is Identity Fabric? How can it be used for Identity Security?

Gartner mentioned in their April 2023 News Release that “By 2027, identity fabric immunity principles will prevent 85% of new attacks and thereby reduce the financial impact of breaches by 80%.”

Identity fabric is a theoretical framework that utilizes a set of Identity services to handle digital identities securely and reliably across numerous platforms, organizations, and systems. Individuals and organizations can easily create and maintain their digital identities as Identity Fabric is an interoperable method used for verification, authentication, and authorization.

An identity Fabric may include

• Identity Governance solutions
• Risk Governance platforms
• Directory Services
• Access Control Solutions
• Security tools and settings within SaaS applications

The power of Identity Fabric is in its flexibility. Any request can be handled by an Identity Fabric-based system, which can then route it to a wide variety of identity consumers. This includes requests from external identities, federated identities, APIs, directory services, databases, etc. The identity needs to be authenticated once, after which it may be used without restrictions aside from those set by identity policies.

What Problems Does Identity Fabric Solve?

Identity Fabric addresses the challenges in Identity management which include fragmented identity systems, lack of interoperability, Lack of Identity Governance, and Privacy and Consent management thatexist in many digital environments.

Fragmented Identity Systems

Organizations use multiple identity systems that operate independently. Identity fabric unifies these systems, enabling centralized management and reducing the risk of security gaps or inconsistencies.

Lack of Interoperability

Interoperability is a challenge between different systems as there is no common framework to connect them. Identity Framework acts as the common framework by establishing standards and protocols that promote interoperability, allowing seamless identity exchange and authentication across various platforms, applications, and organizations.

Lack of Identity Governance

Identity fabric offers identity governance features, allowing businesses to create and enforce regulations regarding access control, roles, and privileges, and guarantee regulatory compliance.

Privacy and Consent Management

Privacy is a priority in identity security. Identity fabric comprises privacy and consent management methods that provide people choices over how their personal data is gathered, utilized, and shared.

Benefits of Identity Fabric in Identity Security

Identity Fabric solution ensures strong cybersecurity by enabling consistent policy enforcement across infrastructures and distributed apps, and simplifying the implementation of advanced identity controls like multi-factor authentication (MFA) and passwordless authentication.

A few benefits of using Identity Fabric in Identity Security Include:

Integrate Fragments

Identity fabric can be used in integrating different identity silos across various cloud platforms and on-prem systems which enforces consistent policies across different cloud platforms.

Composable Architecture

Identity Fabric is a key component of cybersecurity mesh that supports composable security using CSMA (Cyber Security Mesh Architecture) to enable a more flexible, and resilient security ecosystem.

Eliminate Silos

With the help of MFA, passwordless, GDPR privacy, and other features, individual silos can be eliminated that use more than one cloud provider.

Zero-code Deployment

Deployment of new technology involves coding, integration, and compatibility issues. Identity Fabric deployment is a zero-connector integration that eliminates custom code.

Distributed multi-cloud identity

Compatible with different cloud providers thereby ensuring consistent identity across multi-cloud distributed applications.