Cloud Identity Group
Rethinking Security

The Identity and Access Management (IAM) industry has evolved by leaps and bounds, equipping organizations with an approach to break free from the constraints of their existing Active Directory. While we reside in times of uncertainty, “We have to think a lot broader now when it comes to security,” begins Branden Black, founder and principal architect of Cloud Identity Group. The companies struggling with the user-driven environment end up with the common security issue: How to secure data and environment with a diverse workforce? Worse yet, merely putting up Active Directory, end-point solutions, and various firewall technologies in the environment are inept to surmount the hurdles to address the broader security risks. With his 25 years of experience in designing, engineering and delivering identity management and security solutions forming the groundwork, Black founded Cloud Identity Group—a company governed by a mission to secure the networks of expanding relationships within businesses. The company delivers need-based identity and access management (IAM) solutions—addressing end-to-end enterprise security concerns.

While illustrating his company’s offerings, Black points out a common theme in identity and management failure: the lack of understanding about what this discipline can make available to organizations in terms of automation and security. This is precisely where Cloud Identity Group is reimagining security with its tailor-made identity management tools that help in improving the security through the management of individual identities, their authentication, authorization, roles and privileges within or across system and enterprise boundaries. Their tools are underpinned by simple logic: Implementing user-driven policies and procedures for protecting user-data based on access permission.

As an important measure to strengthen security for clients, Cloud Identity Group provides an additional layer of security for every application within the company’s ecosystem using single sign-on (SSO) authentication. Leveraging the best-in-class asset management solution, the company eliminates the need for their client’s employees to remember multiple passwords for different applications. The single sign-on process includes a multi-factor authentication that verifies the user’s identity and access rights for security purposes. It also helps in determining the user’s location, internet network settings, and the intended reason for accessing the data, and based on that information, can provide Step-up multifactor authentication for access. Prior to authorizing access to any data, the solution will also monitor the user’s right privileges based on specific application. “After a thorough understanding of every department's requirements, Cloud Identity Group delivers IAM solutions that best meet each department's unique set of security needs,” says Black. Taking care of client’s end-to-end needs, their access management solution ensures that none of the users has any residual access to data after being promoted or transferred to other departments within the same organization. The company’s access governance services are primarily used by state and federal organizations that need to guarantee proper access management and meet regulatory requirements. Cloud Identity Group also helps clients with integrating every one of their on-prem and off-prem legacy applications onto a single secured cloud service.

Along with designing and implementation of solutions, Cloud Identity Group reevaluates the client’s existing toolset and helps them unleash their potential. Black highlights his company’s prowess based on a case study where they helped a federal government agency. The client had staffed multiple workers to assign RSA tokens to the employees. During off-boarding, these workers had to collect and disable the token from their internal tool manually. In an effort to automate this entire onboarding and off-boarding process, Cloud Identity Group integrated their RSA token services into an identity manager that automatically enabled or disabled tokens.

Considering their humble beginnings and breakneck growth in business, Cloud Identity Group plans to stay nimble in terms of service delivery. The company is also working on infusing blockchain technology into their product offerings—enabling a secure business for the future.