Plan for Your Organization's Future in the Cloud
The driving factors for any organization moving to the cloud invariably include digital transformation, gaining a competitive advantage, and saving money. Unfortunately, even organizations already in the cloud can’t keep up with the pace of new business demands, like passwordless authentication, better experiences for users, or the need to address audit and regulatory pressures. As a result, organizations are facing the need to not only modernize legacy identity and access management (IAM) infrastructure for the cloud, but also support existing and new cloud initiatives while ensuring enough resources remain focused on overall IT modernization.
A comprehensive cloud IAM platform can help organizations simplify access, save money, and grow revenue. According to Forrester Research, organizations can reduce their IT operations and development costs by up to 80% by using cloud IAM solutions. Labor costs are also 80% to 90% lower for initial and ongoing maintenance and development of a cloud IAM solution.1
As your organization grows, your IAM platform should grow with it. To plan for your organization’s future in the cloud, you need a comprehensive, enterprise grade identity platform that supports your priorities with a combination of usability, customizability, and operational cost savings. You also need a range of configuration options so that you can choose the functionality you need. This checklist highlights the top 10 considerations and best practices for your identity cloud strategy.
Consideration 1: Use Cases for Any Identity
- Define use cases – Will rollout support SSO and MFA, or full IAM features like lifecycle management and provisioning?
- Plan integration – Will it augment existing IAM or be a standalone solution?
- Support all identities – Ensure the platform manages users, devices, bots, and more.
- Plan for growth – Choose a flexible, object-based platform that supports custom schemas and attributes.
Consideration 2: Migration to Cloud
- Review deployment – Assess current setup and support for bulk, synced, or JIT migration.
- Create strategy – Decide on replacement or coexistence and find value in each phase.
- Execute plans – Deploy, sync users, migrate apps, and retire legacy systems.
- Migrate apps flexibly – Move apps individually or in groups at your own pace.
- Enable DevOps – Choose a platform that supports CI/CD for seamless updates.
Consideration 3: Coexistence with Legacy
- Support key protocols – Ensure compatibility with SAML, OIDC, OAuth 2.0, and WebAuthn.
- Plan coexistence – Use federation or integrations to bridge legacy systems.
- Sync identities – Maintain consistency with bidirectional identity sync.
- Secure hybrid apps – Protect on-prem and cloud apps via agents, proxies, or modern protocols.
Consideration 4: Hybrid IAM
- Assess vendor fit – Ensure support for on-prem, cloud, and hybrid deployments.
- Choose flexible architecture – Support IaaS, PaaS, and both public and private clouds.
- Ensure feature parity – Align cloud and on-prem capabilities without compromise.
Consideration 5: User Experience
- Enable seamless journeys – Secure access across all devices and channels.
- Support user choice – Create flexible access and self-service journeys with drag-and-drop UI.
- Simplify admin setup – Offer smart defaults, wizard UI, and advanced flexibility.
Consideration 6: Capabilities
- Maintain full features – Use the cloud without losing IAM depth or extensibility.
- Simplify with one platform – Look for identity, access, and directory in one solution.
- Bridge old and new – Ensure gateway security supports APIs, microservices, and legacy apps.
- Design user journeys – Support MFA, passwordless, magic links, and self-service flows.
- Integrate custom tools – Work with developers to support homegrown and legacy systems.
- Manage all identities – Support policies, roles, groups, and all identity types.
- Sync users easily – Enable bidirectional provisioning and bulk user imports.
- Reconcile identities – Use standards-based connectors to keep identity data accurate.
- Sync passwords – Allow password updates from AD/LDAP to sync to the cloud.
- Support SDKs and apps – Embed IAM into apps and offer dedicated MFA/OTP apps.
- Enable advanced use cases – Support risk signals, consent management, personalization, and fine-grained authorization capabilities.
Consideration 7: Security, Privacy, and Compliance
- Prevent data mix-ups – Ensure strict tenant isolation to avoid data spillage or unauthorized access.
- Encrypt all data – Protect data at rest and in transit to prevent breaches.
- Control residency – Choose where your data lives to meet compliance needs.
- Confirm certifications – Look for standards like ISO 27001 and SOC 2.
- Address privacy laws – Comply with GDPR, CCPA, and other regulations.
- Test for threats – Run regular vulnerability scans and manual penetration testing.
- Secure secrets – Use isolated systems for keys and passwords, and rotate encryption keys.
- Monitor continuously – Apply best practices to oversee cloud IAM platforms.
- Enforce RBAC – Control network access using roles and strict policies.
- Block attacks – Defend against DDoS attacks and require TLS 1.2+ with digital certificates.
- Isolate fully – Ensure breaches in one tenant don't affect others or shared services.
- Prepare for incidents – Have a documented incident response plan to detect and recover from events.
- Manage crises – Ensure the vendor has communication plans for customer-impacting events.
Consideration 8: Availability and Predictability
- Ensure multi-region support – Meet data residency and isolation requirements.
- Zero downtime upgrades – Patches shouldn't affect SLA or service availability.
- Reliable uptime – Choose a vendor with 99.99%+ SLA and a proven track record.
- Fast recovery – Restore environments from encrypted backups within SLA.
- Scale on demand – Handle spikes and seasonal traffic without issues.
- Avoid throttling – Service shouldn't block real business activity during surges.
Consideration 9: Vendor Support
- Dedicated success team – Get guided onboarding and deployment planning.
- 24/7 global support – Ensure quick response for critical issues anywhere.
- Dev-friendly tools – Support CI/CD and agile workflows without building custom processes.
- IAM expertise – Partner with a vendor that supports a long-term identity strategy.
Consideration 10: Cost
- One flexible subscription – Deploy anywhere without complex pricing.
- Simple pricing model – Cover most use cases without feature-based fees.
- All-included access – Get development, test, and production environments in a single subscription.
Meet All Requirements With Ping's Cloud
Ping Identity provides the industry's most comprehensive, fully customizable, and extensible identity platform as a service. With PingOne and PingOne Advanced Identity Cloud, you can plan for your current and future business needs with a more attractive, predictable cost model that allows you to focus less on the need to right-size your identity platform and focus more on your business. You will reduce operational risks by relying on a trusted software vendor, simplify your infrastructure footprint, and better align with your cloud strategy.