Multiple credentials are a reality. Managing them can be time consuming and confusing. Axiad simplifies identity security by consolidating all of your existing credentials into a single platform.

By Jerome Becquart

The ability to connect anyone regardless of physical location to team members and assets should simplify life for companies. There’s less reliance on the physical office. Information can be accessed from any internet-connected device; search functions find what you need in milliseconds. But this connectivity comes with risk. Malicious actors are always out there, waiting for an opportunity to exploit weakness in the system.

One of the easiest aspects to exploit is online access to the system. Because of this, most companies now use multi-factor authentication (MFA), tokens, and credentials to secure their network. From a security standpoint, this is absolutely the right thing to do. But managing all of these credentials to keep your systems secure is cumbersome, complex, and time consuming.

To start a typical workday, team members are often asked to use a smart badge to enter the workplace. Next, once at their workstation, they utilize a YubiKey to log into their machine and to the corporate network. They may be  required to have another credential to log in to Office 365. And in most cases they will also have a phone-based token to get into corporate enterprise apps via their mobile device. The situation is even worse for privilege users who may have multiple MFA devices to access admin accounts.

Not only does the user have to remember to carry all of their credentials around with them, each has a lifecycle, and their own platform where the credential is managed. Anytime a user forgets a credential, or when one expires, the IT team or help desk is engaged via an urgent call for help to help resolve the issue and restore access. Being locked out means losing productivity and waiting for a solution. We’re all under stress, dealing with deadlines and expectations in the modern workplace. So if you’re locked out, you want access as soon as possible.

Often, this means that the user will attain temporary access via an emailed temporary password. There are two massive issues with this. First, this circumvents all of the security precautions that MFA and credentials provide. Second, emails with temporary passwords are a target for hackers, who can exploit them in order to gain access to your company system and assets. Basically, although it’s a quick solution that’s often employed, it’s something that your company should completely eliminate.

In many companies, the above scenario is a daily occurrence. It’s just one of the instances where the security team has to help manage credentials and system access. There are many more. Each credential needs to be deprovisioned when someone leaves the company. Each time someone takes on a new role with new responsibilities, the credentials need to be adjusted for higher security and assurance levels. And because everyone has multiple credentials, this means that someone is logging into separate platforms for each to manage the changes. It shouldn’t have to be this way. And with Axiad, it doesn’t.

Axiad’s simplified solution: A single platform

Multiple credentials for access is simply a reality right now. With credentials for users, devices, systems, and apps, most companies rely on a fragmented set of solutions. While there are a few cloud-based applications that attempt to consolidate credential management, they all fall short when it comes to organizations that require higher levels of security for specific teams and employees. They also typically fail to deliver on lifecycle management, and in most cases don’t address on-premise access or Windows and Mac logins. So, what does Axiad do differently?

Axiad is a single platform from which you can manage and deploy every credential type within your business. No more logging into multiple platforms and managing each credential, its capabilities, and lifecycle individually. We go beyond managing identity credentials for users—we also manage identities for devices, systems, and applications, securing your entire organization from a single, centralized hub.

We’re often asked who our competitors are. The answer, really, is that we don’t have direct competitors, because our approach is different than anyone in identity security. Axiad doesn’t replace a credential issuer, or create a new type of credential, which would further complicate your organization’s credential management system. Instead, we easily plug into your existing IAM infrastructure, which leverages the strengths of your current identity security solutions, while addressing its shortcomings. By consolidating all of your credentials into one platform, and addressing the use cases where the highest levels of security are required (like FIPS, CMMC, and NIST SP800-171), we provide the simplest, most secure way to ensure identity security.

Most solutions require you to sacrifice security for ease of use. We’ve built our entire suite of solutions to save the end users, help desk, and IT team time and effort, while maintaining MFA protocols at every step. Our Self Help Portal and Airlock are both designed to give users control over their credential management, while maintaining the rigorous security your organization needs, and minimizing interaction and workload for your IT team and help desk. This approach boosts productivity significantly, as members of your organization aren’t left waiting to receive access from another party.

While our solution streamlines your identity credential management into one platform, we do so with a dedicated private cloud service for each organization, with no sharing, and no compromises—ever. You maintain full visibility of and control over your credentials, and never cede ownership or management to a third party. When you have full control of your identity credentials, you can have the highest level of trust that your organization is secure.

Identity issuance and management continues to evolve alongside the technology that it’s designed to support and secure. In the ten years Axiad has existed, we’ve worked hard to stay ahead of the curve, building and designing to stay in front of threats and creating practical, simple solutions. We’ve built a team consisting of the leading experts in the industry in order to continually build new solutions that allow you to focus on what matters most: your business.

Axiad goes far beyond helping you implement our solutions. We’re committed to assisting you post-implementation to ensure that the identity security of your entire organization is secure. Whether it’s today or tomorrow, we’ll be here designing for the needs of the present, with an eye on the potential threats of the future, as a partner to help you achieve the ultimate level of identity security.