What is the Difference Between CIEM vs IAG?
As a CEO of a cybersecurity professional services company, I'm often asked about the differences between Cloud Identity Entitlement Management (CIEM), pronounced "KIM", and Identity Access Governance (IAG). Both are crucial for managing access and identities and they serve distinct purposes.
Author:
Michael Ribaudo
Co - CEO , CyberIAM
CIEM focuses on providing visibility and managing entitlements (permissions, access, and privileges) across cloud infrastructure, apps, and data, helping organisations to:
- Increase visibility and analytics into cloud access and entitlements
- Detect and remediate excessive permissions
- Ensure least privilege access across the cloud
IAG, on the other hand, is a broader discipline that encompasses the policies, processes, and technologies for managing identity and access across an organisations systems and applications. IAG includes:
- Identity lifecycle management (Joiners, Movers, leavers)
- Access request and approval workflows
- Access reviews
- Role-based access control
- Segregation of duties
While CIEM is a critical component of IAG, they are not interchangeable terms. CIEM addresses cloud-specific entitlements, whereas IAG provides a comprehensive framework for managing identity and access across all environments. In today's security and risk environment, too many audits have traditionally focused their controls around managing on-premises applications and systems, and not enough focus has been placed on cloud entitlements.
An IAG and CIEM solution is imperative for protecting the entire estate.
In today's complex cloud landscape, understanding the differences between CIEM and IAG is crucial for effective identity and access management. Let's work together to build a more secure digital future!