ROLE | Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)
Enhance Your Security With IAM at the Front Line
As the focus on information security and privacy intensifies, your role as a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) becomes increasingly important within the organisation. It involves not just the secure deployment of an expanding number of interconnected information systems but also the development, rollout and maintenance of specific information security systems as a boardroom concern. Consequently, the modernisation of Identity and Access Management is a high priority in many organisations.
Information Security Through Automation
By automating the identity lifecycle in an entirely business-driven way with HelloID, using the HR system – or other source systems – as the ‘single source of truth’, you minimise the risk of errors, unwanted accumulation of rights and data breaches due to ‘forgotten’ accounts. We can also make the management of additional/temporary access rights more efficient and secure.
No Trust and Least Privilege
For user verification, HelloID integrates seamlessly with systems such as Active Directory, often supplemented with MFA and context-dependent access. The robust Role Based Access Control mechanism ensures that users are granted access to applications and data strictly on a ‘need to know’ basis.
Support for PDCA Cycle and Compliance Audits
HelloID logs all attempts at access, changes in rights and requests for permissions in audit logs. There is also an ever-present inventory of all issued access rights. With standard reports and customer-configurable analyses, HelloID provides all the necessary input for internal security evaluations, external audits and formal certification processes.
Secure Cloud-Native IAM Environment
HelloID operates on infrastructure provided by the market leaders Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. Information security is at the heart of HelloID’s development and management. This applies to development, demo and test systems as well, and a sandbox environment is available for customers to safely test new features. As a managing organisation, Tools4ever is ISO 27001 certified.
Comprehensive Security Architecture
HelloID meticulously records every access attempt, changes in permissions, and requests for authorization in its audit logs, ensuring a constant overview of all allocated access rights. It offers standard reports and customizable analyses, equipping organizations with essential data for conducting internal security assessments, facilitating external audits, and navigating formal certification pathways.
Questions CISOs Often Ask
Do we need HelloID if we manage our own AD environment?
Yes. While many now use their own AD environment for the original IAM functionalities – Authentication & Authorisation – what is often missing is a comprehensive management solution for promptly providing the correct rights automatically to hundreds of users and dozens of applications in a large organisation. HelloID addresses this need. AD provides the technical implementation of Authentication and Authorisation, while HelloID manages further integration and management. Moreover, our flexible Access Management module, which includes extensive Single Sign-On functionality and Multi-Factor Authentication, often provides necessary solutions during migration and merger projects. It is also not always necessary for all user groups to utilise extensive – and therefore more expensive – MS licenses. For them, the HelloID SSO and MFA Access Management functionality, coupled with a relatively inexpensive E1 license, often suffices.
Does HelloID support my security and privacy awareness initiatives?
Certainly, employee awareness is a vital part of information security. With automated processes for onboarding, transitioning and offboarding, along with our robust RBAC framework, we primarily focus on ensuring alignment with the ‘least privilege’ principle. This way, we prevent employees from accessing data they don’t need to perform their tasks. Nevertheless, if desired by clients, we can also add such ‘awareness measures’. For example, we can incorporate business rules in HelloID that require people to explicitly accept the organisation’s privacy guidelines before their access rights are activated. Pending acceptance, they may, for instance, only have access to email and standard applications. Additionally, for supplementary requests, the online approval process can explicitly check whether the requester meets specific (training) requirements.
How does the RBAC framework support the 'least privilege' requirement?
Within the Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) framework, the access rights for each role are clearly defined, ensuring that individuals only have ‘need to know’ access. Should someone’s role change in the HR system, HelloID automatically checks which rights are no longer applicable, and these are revoked accordingly. Similarly, it checks for new access rights needed for the new role and grants them automatically. This method prevents the unwanted accumulation of access rights, which can occur with manual rights management.
How do you organise access security during a reorganisation?
For this purpose, the RBAC framework is ideal. With RBAC, we manage all roles and their associated access rights in one central location. During a reorganisation, numerous changes can be implemented which, from an RBAC perspective, essentially boils down to adding roles and altering the access rights linked to roles. By first creating new roles and rights in HelloID and then associating employees with new roles in the HR system, we migrate to the new structure in a controlled manner, while ensuring everyone maintains access to their applications and data.
Can an organisation-wide RBAC framework be applied?
No, generally, that is not practical. In many organisations, we can create a complete RBAC profile for certain key roles, encompassing all the necessary access rights. These often pertain to well-defined roles. However, individuals may have multiple roles, and there are also less concretely defined functions within, for example, supporting departments. For such employees, we grant basic access rights through the RBAC model. Additional access rights need to be requested through the service process. With HelloID, we can also automate such request processes. To prevent the granting of unnecessary rights, we can set up specific permission flows where relevant managers must review/approve the request online. This ensures role separation is maintained, and we can also configure such rights to be granted on a temporary basis only, thus avoiding the unwanted accumulation of rights.
