Understanding the general concepts of IAM

The IAM architecture is the activity of defining the processes, tools, monitoring mechanisms, and governance required in order to grant the enterprise's internal and external users access to the right digital assets in a well-governed and secure manner. The IAM architecture needs to ensure that users are granted the right level of access privileges based on internal and external requirements, such as enterprise policies or regulatory compliance.

The users included in an IAM architecture could be external (and in this case, we usually use the term customer identity and access management (CIAM)) or internal (where we simply use the term IAM).

The IAM strategy aims at creating a unified digital identity for the enterprise's customers and employees, along with a set of tools and processes to manage this identity and the access rights associated with it.

The IAM architecture is critical in today's connected enterprise applications...