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GUIDE
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The Cloud Identity Buyer's Guide
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How to Choose a Cloud Identity Solution that Maximizes Flexibility, Security, Cost Efficiency and Agility
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Introduction

"Digital transformation" is often used as a broad, generalized term to describe something that's actually much more complex. And doing it well requires a significant change management effort, which can make digital transformation feel too burdensome for some.

Though many aspects of a digital transformation come with challenges, there's no denying the advantages this change can provide for business leaders to well position their organizations for the digital era. But, to do it right, you need a solid digital transformation strategy in place.

Digital transformation is helping successful organizations create competitive advantage, giving them the ability to meet growing customer demands for digital services and convenient interactions. As the workforce has become more mobile and remote work is here to stay, digital transformation is also giving enterprises the ability to provide customers, employees and business partners secure and seamless access to resources. Finally, let's not overlook the increases in speed and innovation – or the cost savings – gained through digital transformation.

Cloud computing and identity and access management (IAM) are foundational to realizing the full potential of digital transformation. And when it comes to choosing the right cloud solution for your organization, you must start by determining the best cloud strategy for your needs.

Ping's Cloud: Improves TCO, Scale and Security

For large global enterprises, migrating to the cloud with an approach that's centered on modern cloud identity is almost always the best option, providing the ultimate in flexibility, security, cost efficiency and agility. Migrating to Ping's cloud will ensure your ability to support the complex needs and shifting priorities of your whole enterprise, both now and in the future.

Choosing a cloud identity security solution that supports your specific digital transformation objectives while addressing the necessary cloud migration requirements can be a daunting task. This buyer's guide will make the process easier.

Read on to uncover:

What to Look for in a Cloud Identity Security Solution

As business has become more digital, identity teams face a greater volume of requests and must meet a broader range of requirements. This puts a strain on already limited resources.

You can alleviate these demands by moving identity to the cloud. Cloud identity can save enterprises significant IT operational costs and accelerate time to market, without compromising security or support for challenging use cases.

A modern cloud identity solution should also make migration as easy as possible for your team. A solution that provides the following capabilities will ensure a smooth journey to the cloud and give you the capabilities you need to experience the full benefits of cloud identity.

Cloud Identity Delivers Advantages Like

Flexibility and Future-proofing

Modern IAM solutions can flexibly adapt to protect any resource, no matter the type. A modern solution allows for deployment of web apps, mobile apps and APIs, in a private cloud or in the public cloud, all while maintaining the same level of access control.

Unlimited Scalability

Today's IAM solutions are engineered for peak usage to eliminate outages when extreme scale is required.

While you may not require this scalability today, the right IAM solution will help you resolve existing performance, stability and latency issues commonly associated with legacy tools. Of course, it also means you'll be ready when it is time to scale up or down based on demand.

Simple Self-service Application Integration

Digital transformation requires rapid adoption of new resources, and IAM is critical to launch. Modern IAM enables security experts to provide a standard set of templates to business users so they can confidently launch their own apps and APIs, accelerating the rate of transformation and enterprise-wide security coverage.

Strict Adherence to Identity Standards

The use of identity standards ensures the secure delivery of identity attributes and supports the elimination of passwords. Comprehensive support for standards like SAML, OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, LDAP and SCIM ensures a wide range of use cases can be enabled.

Extensive Enterprise Integrations

Modern IAM solutions don't require complex, custom development to integrate with common enterprise technologies. They allow you to leverage out-of-the-box integrations to popular apps and integrate with common enterprise security solutions to rapidly enhance security and maintain business continuity. Better yet, new orchestration services make integrations a breeze across your identity and IT flows.

Seamless, Zero-downtime Migration

Modern IAM solutions weren't built in a void; they're designed to support an easy migration to the cloud from legacy IAM systems. Built-in migration and synchronization tools, professional services and proven integration partners provide a stable coexistence period that gives organizations complete flexibility to migrate in manageable phases.

Support for All Use Cases

A unified cloud identity platform capable of serving all of your users – from customers to employees to partners – will save you time, money and heartache. Deliver seamless customer experiences from the first interaction with your digital properties to help turn customers into loyal advocates with social login and passwordless capabilities. Maximize business value from workforce and partner identities by boosting productivity, improving the security posture of your organization and increasing overall business agility by enabling SSO, MFA, risk management and provisioning capabilities.

Identifying Your Specific Cloud Identity Requirements

With an understanding of the core capabilities to prioritize in a cloud identity solution, you'll want to next define the requirements for your specific use cases. To make this process easier, we recommend approaching your cloud journey as a three-stage process. Using this three-stage journey, you can break down the requirements needed at each stage to ensure a smooth transition to the next.

Diagram showing how a model of establishing, optimizing, and consolidating identity in the cloud

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Stage 1:
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Establish your cloud identity by securing and controlling access to resources across all of your domains and platforms, from public clouds to private clouds to on-premises environments.
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Stage 2:
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Optimize identity with other services and orchestration capabilities in order to deliver the most secure and seamless user experiences.
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Stage 3:
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Consolidate your legacy identity systems in the cloud, allowing you to alleviate the management and cost associated with them, while accelerating onboarding of new apps.

Stage 1: Establishing Identity in the Cloud

Diagram depicting the step of establishing cloud identity in a three step process

Your cloud journey begins with establishing a robust global authentication authority that gives you the ability to secure and control access to resources deployed anywhere. When evaluating a solution's ability to streamline this stage, look closely at the vendor's ability to support deployment across all of your domains and platforms – from public clouds to private clouds to on-premises environments – as well as support all identity types, user populations, apps and environments.

Evaluation Criteria
Why it Matters
Does the vendor enable Zero Trust frameworks across all cloud environments?
Adopting a Zero Trust security strategy allows you to open your applications and data to anyone, anywhere, with minimal friction and maximum connectivity. This enhances security and helps users consume resources hosted in private data centers and public clouds.
Does the vendor support all user populations utilizing a unified cloud identity platform?
Building a centralized security control point ensures your customers, employees and partners have secure access to resources from anywhere. A unified cloud identity platform gives you the ability to deliver personalized experiences, reduce costs and increase productivity.
Does the vendor meet enterprise-grade performance requirements, such as 99.99% uptime and scalability to support demand surges?
Uptime is critical to ensuring users always have access. A proven ability to scale is also needed to support global organizations and continued business growth. In addition to requesting validation of performance from vendors, you can look at the vendor's NPS (net promoter score) to gain insight into how well they're meeting customer needs.
Does the vendor provide enhanced security and control options to meet data residency requirements?
The ability to deploy individual tenants for separate and secure data stores – including the ability to manage and delete data as needed – gives organizations ultimate control. Additionally, the ability to deploy to different regions supports data sovereignty and other regulatory requirements.
Does the vendor provide self-service onboarding for any application or resource across your enterprise?
You can improve speed and agility across your business with a self-service portal that allows application owners to integrate their own apps and consume IAM services.
Does the vendor support multiple deployment options?
You should be able to choose where to deploy identity to meet your specific business needs. A vendor should be able to provide you with deployment options, including the simplicity of a multi-tenant IDaaS solution, the configurability of a single-tenant managed solution or the customizability of an on-premises solution connection.
Does the vendor offer both multi-tenant and single-tenant identity-as-a-service (IDaaS) deployment options?
Many organizations are prioritizing deployments in clouds that are managed for them. To address this, you need a vendor that offers IDaaS deployment options – whether multi-tenant or private-tenant IDaaS depending on your needs – to ensure you're able to maintain control over your environment.
Can the vendor support a unified identity across multiple environments?
Some enterprises need to deploy their identity solution across several types of environments. They may want to use a single or multi-tenant IDaaS for some apps, while other critical apps are in private cloud or on-premises environments. If you have these types of needs, make sure your vendor can maintain a unified identity solution during cross-environmental deployments.
Does the vendor provide DevOps resources such as Docker and Kubernetes?
If your enterprise is like most, you need the control and flexibility to deploy identity solutions in the private and public clouds of your choice. This includes the need for tools like Docker and Kubernetes in order to automate these deployments and make them reliable and repeatable.

Stage 2: Optimizing Cloud Identity

Diagram depicting the step of optimizing cloud identity in a three step process

Once you've established identity in the cloud, you'll want to optimize your identity services to achieve the optimal balance of security and user convenience. Requirements at this stage include capabilities like support for multiple authentication methods, passwordless login, remote user registration and add-on services such as orchestration, risk management and fraud detection.

Evaluation Criteria
Why it Matters
Does the vendor offer identity services that embed directly into your apps via mobile SDK?
Your customers don't want to download a separate third-party identity application to use alongside your app. Embedding identity functionality directly into your own application provides customers with a convenient and secure experience.
Does the vendor support integration of new services with your authentication authority?
To meet business needs, you need the ability to support rapid deployment and easily onboard new services. A vendor's ability to support fast, easy integration of new services will provide the speed you need to get up and running, driving value to your business faster.
Does the vendor support the latest MFA authentication methods and standards?
Your users have specific preferences and needs. Allowing for several authentication methods – including email, voice, SMS, mobile app, authentication app, OATH tokens, security keys and FIDO2 biometrics – will increase the adoption of MFA across your business, which in turn improves security.
Does the vendor provide options for passwordless authentication and login?
Whether customers are making a purchase from your e-commerce site or exploring a new app, signing on is an inconvenience they don't look forward to. You don't want to lose them because of a poor experience. Passwordless login delivers the seamless experience they expect, while providing the security they need.
Does the vendor enable adaptive authentication through risk factors like user behavior analytics (UEBA) enabled by machine learning?
You can help your organization make smarter authentication decisions by using machine learning and analytics to detect malicious activity. By analyzing multiple risk signals, adaptive authentication gives you the ability to identify anomalous activity to block attacks or step up authentication requirements in order to gain a greater level of assurance of your users' identities.
Does the vendor provide a suite of identity services and tools that can be easily integrated?
Your digital transformation is a continuous journey and therefore, the need for new services and tools doesn't end. The main goal is to manage everything in one place and deliver a comprehensive set of cloud identity and access management services. Choose any or all that you need without interdependency or vendor lock-in.
Does the vendor provide secure identity verification for new user registration?
By integrating secure identity verification at user registration, you can have greater confidence that your customers are who they claim to be with minimal friction. For example, you'll want your vendor to provide support for U.S. and international driver's licenses, ISO-based international passports and European ID cards.

Stage 3: Consolidating Legacy Identity Systems

Diagram depicting the step of consolidating identity in the cloud in a three step process

The final stage of your cloud journey is consolidating identity in the cloud. Legacy IAM can be rigid, slowing down the onboarding of new apps and preventing migration to the cloud. By consolidating on a single platform that's purpose-built to support complex use cases, you can solve these problems while also achieving meaningful cost savings. Criteria at this stage centers on evaluating a vendor's ability to support and provide a phased migration over time, without the disruption of a rip-and-replace approach.

Evaluation Criteria
Why it Matters
Does the vendor support bi-directional synchronization to enable phased migrations?
Synchronizing changes directly from the data sources in the background makes it possible for applications to continue updating their data sources directly. It also eliminates the need to store any data from the endpoints themselves. This reduces both hardware and administration costs while driving legacy modernization.
Does the vendor support a zero-downtime transition to a new directory?
Modern directory solutions should deliver the performance needed for today's enterprise, including continuation of service, even during migration. You want the ability to integrate with proprietary applications, so you can increase performance and reliability while co-existing with proprietary directories during synchronization or migration.
Does the vendor enable policy-based MFA routing in support of phased migrations?
To make deployments easy, you'll need out-of-the-box integrations to VPNs and applications like Office 365, as well as simple-to-use APIs. Also, self-service features for your end users and simple administration eliminate the effort typically required for MFA rollout.
Does the vendor support integrations with other MFA vendors like RSA SecureID, Symantec VIP and Duo Security?
To prevent gaps in productivity and security during migration, you want a solution that integrates with dozens of third-party two-factor and strong authentication providers like RSA SecureID, Symantec VIP, Safenet and Google Authenticator.
Does the vendor enable automated WAM policy migration tools from other identity providers like Oracle, Broadcom/CA Technologies, IBM and RSA?
You want your infrastructure to be able to coexist with solutions like CA Single Sign-On (formerly CA SiteMinder), RSA Access Manager, Oracle Access Manager and IBM Tivoli Access, so you can continue to leverage your existing investment as you upgrade to a secure, modern solution.
Does the vendor provide custom WAM plugins for products like CA SSO, Oracle AM, RSA AM and others?
A simple software development kit (SDK) creates custom WAM plug-ins for other systems for seamless migrations.

Additional Cloud Identity Requirements for Large Enterprises

In addition to evaluating a vendor's ability to help you deliver on identity migration to the cloud and support your specific requirements, you also need them to provide a core set of capabilities. Here are some foundational criteria you'll want to include, regardless of your specific objectives.

Evaluation Criteria
Why it Matters
Does the vendor support open standards?
It's vital for a modern customer identity platform to support open standards like SAML, SCIM, OAuth and OpenID Connect to ensure the solution is extensible and versatile.
Can the vendor connect to custom applications that are not standards-based?
While your platform must support standards, many of your customer-facing applications may not. Your vendor should be able to connect to these applications and provide simple access to any and all digital properties in your portfolio.
Does the vendor support strong end-to-end security at every layer?
To ensure the security of sensitive data, your vendor should provide strong security during authentication, at the application and API layer and at the data layer.
Does the vendor provide best practices, sample apps and out-of-the-box (OOTB) UIs?
You need to deliver secure and seamless experiences for your customers and employees. Your vendor should make this easier by providing tools and resources to ensure your success, including extensive API documentation, sample apps and OOTB integration kits to get you up and running quickly. Many vendors might list password-vaulting or "supporting SAML" as integrations, but you'll want to investigate deeper to ensure your vendor has robust integration support.
Does the vendor have an extensive list of OOTB integrations?
Many vendors might list password-vaulting or “supporting SAML” as integrations but you’ll want to investigate deeper to ensure your vendor has robust integrations to support your environments and use cases.

Shortlisting & Selecting a Cloud Identity Solution

Once you've identified your requirements, you'll want to organize them in a way that makes it easy to evaluate how solutions stack up. A Google Sheet or Excel spreadsheet works well for this.

We suggest first creating rows for each of your requirements. Next, add columns for each vendor you want to evaluate. Then you can rate each vendor on how well they meet your criteria using a point-based rating system like this:

Using this system, you rate each vendor from 0–3 on each of the criteria. Then tally each vendor's column totals to see who rises to the top.

Making the Best Cloud Identity Decision for Your Needs

Choosing cloud identity solutions for your customer, workforce and partner use cases is an important decision. The right solution will provide the foundation you need to ensure digital transformation and cloud migration success, while making your job significantly easier.

Ping's cloud increases operational efficiency so you're able to quickly respond to changing business needs. 69% of the Fortune 100 trust Ping for centralized and flexible identity services. We secure more than 8 billion accounts globally. Supported by powerful capabilities like dynamic authentication and adaptive access, they're providing the right people secure and seamless access to the right resources – and you can, too.

Ping has the tools and expertise to migrate your identity to the cloud, secure your cloud identity and consolidate your identity services in the cloud to streamline your operational efficiency and lower your total cost of ownership.

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