Ironsphere’s Admin Management API is one example of the programmability of our Privileged Access Security modules; this allows the lifecycle management of configurations, inventories and policies with advanced automation, and straightforward integrating with existing provisioning systems.

Telecommunications companies are one of the largest and most lucrative targets for cyber-attacks given the mission critical nature of their connectivity services and the enterprises, governments, educational institutions, and global organizations they support. They develop, operate and are responsible for controlling critical infrastructure that carries a massive amount of data and connects databases, clouds, and applications. The fastest growing threat to telecom companies is privileged access abuse, and Ironsphere is proud to protect some of the largest fixed and mobile networks in the world. Ironsphere’s solutions were initially built for global telecom carriers. These solutions, which are the most advanced and easiest to implement and manage in the world, help protect breaches which can lead to service disruption, the exfiltration of personal and private information about customers, and spying. Telecom companies, which are increasingly selling cyber security services to their clients must deal with business and reputational risk and are beginning to lead in the area of secure access management for their own infrastructure, which also helps secure interconnected networks, facilities, clouds and applications.

With the continued growth of cloud services from companies like AWS, Microsoft Azure, IBM, Verizon, Rackspace, Alibaba and dozen others, Privileged Access Management enables the providers themselves to securely manage their own infrastructure, while also providing secure access management services to their customers. As more and more enterprises and businesses move to “Everything as a Service” models, the value of elasticity, scalability and agility of the cloud is well proven, but the benefits of cloud can be wiped out with a single breach that leads to data loss and reputational damage as evidenced in recent mass events. Clouds are made up of many components, and many organizations use multiple clouds – private, public, hybrid and multi – and are trusting the cloud service providers to protect mission critical applications, data and systems. Privileged access to cloud components must be included, ensuring only authorized individuals can access Management Consoles, Command Line Interfaces (CLIs), Cloud APIs, assets and workloads. Legacy approaches to roles, permissions and policies are no longer able to keep up with the dynamic nature of cloud, which is why adopting a cloud-native secure access management solution like the one Ironsphere has pioneered is the way to go. The inherent nature of cloud elasticity means “events” occur with great volume and velocity during any given day, when tens of thousands of accesses can be spun up and torn down in 24 hours. A well-defined and centralized secure access management solution, integrated between the enterprise and their cloud provider, is the most effective way to ensure both are protected.

Managed Service Providers (MSPs), including Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs), are leveraging two dimensions of secure access management solutions. First, they are protecting their own networks, systems, data and internal assets by putting solid Privileged Access Management platforms like Ironsphere in place. Second, they are rolling out new offerings to their clients, bringing their IT teams and counterparts the same quality technology which ensures only authorized administrators can access the infrastructure, clouds, and systems their company hired the MSP or MSSP to help protect. Ironsphere’s service provider solutions enable management and reporting across any number of multiple instances and make it straightforward and profitable for service providers to set up and partition offerings they can sell to every client through a subscription or seat-based model. Ironsphere’s platform is designed to be implemented in an MSP’s data center, or in the cloud, with little or no upfront capex, and flexible “pay as you grow” opex which means their new offerings can scale using our intuitive management portal. MSP’s and MSSP’s can manage clients by organization, can automate reports, and can easily bill for services on either separate invoices, or a combined invoice, given our APIs. Ironsphere’s partners can start with a single instance, then immediately scale the solution with additional assets to meet the needs of their clients, including rolling out new services developed by Ironsphere. With Ironsphere, our partners can deliver new value-added services to their customers, growing their footprint and revenue, take advantage of a state-of-the-art web-based management console which is fully mobile responsive, can integrate Ironsphere’s solutions with existing SIEM, GRC and systems management tools, maintain a multi-tenant deployment making their operating centers more productive, and support physical, virtual, cloud-based and other offerings, including secure connectivity.

The IoT and Industrial IoT continue to expand, and today with over 500 platforms available for connected solutions, enterprises and organizations who are implementing are looking at ensuring security as a forethought, not an afterthought. The data collected from devices brings tremendous cost savings and operational efficiencies, whether enabling factory automation, smart home services, connected cars, and even entire Smart City solutions. Connected end points can also be controlled today, in close looped systems, automating the energy grid and other mission critical systems, which, if breached, could be catastrophic. From individual consumers to large industrial plants, IoT impacts everyone and everything today, but without securing IoT platforms, providers and consumers are at risk, and by ensuring secure access management is in place, risks associated with insider threats can be reduced by as much as fifty percent (given that approximately half of the breaches today are caused intentionally or accidentally by internal administrators). Ironsphere enables IoT platform providers to secure credentials for these at-risk accounts and provides for efficient and immediate auditing given real time logging, allowing providers to prevent breaches and demonstrate compliance. Ironsphere gives IoT Platform providers the capability to monitor access and manage all credentials through a unified system that provides a centralized point of authentication, reducing exposure and risk associated with privileged accounts and shared administrative credentials.