Symphonic
Redefining Access Management and Authorization Intelligently

Historically, access decisions in an organization were based on simple factors such as the role and the characteristics of the target that users are accessing. However, traditional approaches toward identity and access management are outdated with the requirements of the API-based interconnected economy. The sweep of digitization across organizations has been accompanied by security concerns around data breaches and privacy threats, calling for an intelligent platform that could analyze an array of factors to determine whether an access request should be authorized or not.

In response, UK-based Symphonic combined their technology and security expertise to develop an integrated access management solution that provides organizations with centralized visibility and control over who they share their data with and how. “Symphonic can be deployed within a client’s IT infrastructure, complementing and enhancing their existing authentication and identity platform with our set of authorization capabilities to meet emerging organizational requirements,” begins Derick James, CEO of Symphonic. Designed for flexibility and agility, Symphonic’s comprehensive solution, which includes Trust Framework, Policy Manager, Authorization Engine, and Governance, simplifies the access management ecosystem.

The Trust Framework, a unique Symphonic feature, is the foundation for the access policies. The framework provides a complete map of a client’s enterprise data ecosystem cataloguing the information related to resources being protected, users, and data points that provide contextual information when making dynamic authorization decisions. From these building blocks, the Symphonic Policy Manager abstracts control from individual systems, creates access rules that make sense in the real world and streamlines the management process to deliver business agility and compliance.

In delivering fine-grained and context-aware control, the Symphonic Authorization Engine evaluates access requests coming from the company’s internal and external users and ensures enforcement of the company’s policy rules. The Authorization engine captures real-time context surrounding a decision, provides feedback on the state of decision-making and the attributes used at the time the decision was made, for secure and effective authorization decisioning.

What differentiates Symphonic from their competition is the centralization of authorization into a single set of policies, which has the ability to cover multiple agencies and internal silos. By doing so, Symphonic assures organizations that their policies are applied consistently, with agility across numerous applications, and clear visibility on the access policies that have been implemented.

When approached by a client, Symphonic’s on-boarding process begins by defining the technical landscape of the client’s assets. The team seeks a deep understanding of the organizational and regulatory requirements that need to be reflected in policies, and together with the technical landscape library, models the company policies and establishes a configuration and deployment strategy that delivers the client requirements. Representing a typical deployment, the Symphonic team is currently working with a large bank to meet Open Banking and PSD/2 regulations by introducing an intelligent authorization service that checks internal fraud/risk systems, cloud-based risk assessment sensors, and evaluates user and target characteristics in real-time as part of the transactional flow across multiple channels. Symphonic’s platform manages the bank’s policies and complex rules before permitting the completion of a transaction, meeting the key objective of balanced customer experience and security.

With clients in Australia, US and Europe, Symphonic looks to expand into other markets with further supportive partners. Symphonic has witnessed solid growth in its engineering and sales headcount, and James expects this to continue going forward. The year ahead looks promising as they develop their next major product to provide further capability, due for release in the mid of next year.