May 17 2022 12:47 PM
The acceleration of cloud journeys fueled by the pandemic and ever-increasing concerns about data security and information privacy have made access management one of the hottest topics in application security and Zero Trust architecture discussions. Over the last several years, the industry has made tremendous progress on identity and access management, and Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), with its focus on Zero Trust comprehensive cloud-based identity services, is a perfect example of this.
Achieving a secure environment is top of mind for both public and private sector organizations, with research firm markets anticipating the global Zero Trust security market will grow from USD19.6 billion in 2020 to USD51.6 billion by 2026. The United States government has mandated a federal Zero Trust architecture strategy, while businesses of every size are working to implement modern identity and access management solutions that support single sign-on (SSO), multifactor authentication, and many other key features, including adaptive and context-aware policies, governance intelligence, and automation.1
To achieve Zero Trust for applications and services, we must ensure people are who they say they are and that only the right people have access to sensitive information. This is the only way to comply with evolving data privacy regulations such as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Consequently, companies must create a comprehensive, manageable way to authenticate and authorize every attempt to access data—