Protection against sabotage and data theft requires an unbroken chain of measures. PIAM combines physical access authorization and secure login — and stands or falls with its practical implementation.
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Protection against sabotage and data theft can only be achieved through a chain of measures – and this chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Physical Identity and Access Management provides centralized authorization management for all company applications — combining access authorization with secure login. Practical implementation is just as crucial as the security concept itself.
PIAM — Physical Identity and Access Management — refers to the centralized management of physical and logical access.
Our economy and critical infrastructures are at risk: Damage from data theft, industrial espionage, or sabotage in German companies totaled over 223 billion euros in 2021 alone. A Bitkom study confirms: Nine out of ten companies have already fallen victim to cyberattacks. Ransomware attacks are driving an enormous increase: "The damages caused by these attacks have more than quadrupled (+358 percent) compared to the previous years 2018/2019," reports the industry association.
Oiltanking learned firsthand that cybercrime can literally bring operations to a halt: the fuel supplier was unable to deliver fuel from its 13 depots. The domestic intelligence agency recently warned about Chinese hackers targeting trade secrets and even being held responsible for attacks on Western government agencies. Traces of the recent cyberattacks on Ukraine lead to Belarus and Russia. Cyberattacks are part of organized crime and covert warfare.
In the Bitkom study, social engineering is also considered the most important initial entry point for hackers and crackers. 41 percent of the surveyed companies recently experienced attempts to obtain passwords by manipulating employees – 27 percent of respondents reported being contacted by phone, among other methods, and 24 percent by email. Home office concepts hastily implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic have opened up new vulnerabilities.
Dynamic passwords and two-factor authentication can certainly make life difficult for attackers. However, many companies shy away from the high effort involved in common security concepts – both in their implementation and in ongoing operation.
A secure login remains useless if unauthorized individuals can too easily gain access to company premises. In such cases, data can quickly be stolen from currently unused but still logged-in terminals, or at least physical LAN connections can be established with a simple network cable.
Logical access restrictions without physical barriers are therefore worthless – and vice versa. However, many security concepts have established two or more separate systems for these two complementary protection approaches. This not only leads to unnecessary administrative effort but also to security gaps: it's easily forgotten that when an employee leaves, both their office smart card and their VPN and PC login must be blocked – across all branches, remote offices, and servers.
Especially in the modern working world, with its increasingly heterogeneous structures and rapidly rising threat potential, a centralized digital identity for every employee is more important than ever: all security systems, both logical and physical, draw their access parameters from a single database. Every authorization only needs to be created once – and can be revoked with a single click.
For employees, this system offers significantly more convenience: with their security badge, they can enter all designated rooms, log into their office or home office computer, unlock their locker, pay in the canteen, or drive into the underground car park of another branch. For the company, a central digital identity ensures maximum security – and also eliminates redundant data maintenance.
At evolutionID, we have already implemented the PIAM security and rationalization concept – with our web-based enterprise solution IDfunction PIAM. It enables the decentralized management of a centralized database that supplies all relevant security systems with the necessary access data in real-time. The concept, while highly secure internally, offers great flexibility in administration, enabling a variety of practical and cost-saving features, such as the automatic acquisition of ID photos, which can even be taken with consumer devices.
Therefore, stringent protection of buildings and computers does not necessarily have to involve high effort and corresponding high costs. If security solutions are elegantly combined, both security and financial management can look forward to the future with confidence.
--- Source: Statista Source: Bitkom Source: Handelsblatt Source: Spiegel Source: Zeit Online
