IAM & Security Insights Archives

The Vital Role of IAM in the Top 5 Cybersecurity Trends for 2025

With more cyber threats emerging on a daily basis, the world of cybersecurity needs to evolve fast to suit. As we enter 2025, here are the top trends shaping the industry, and how IAMs impact each.

1. AI-Driven Cybersecurity

AI is set to revolutionize cybersecurity because it can detect threats in real time. Analyzing huge amounts of data in a split second, AI-based systems can identify anomalies and predict probable risks. They take proactive measures to safeguard digital environments.

Since AI is always learning from new threats, its ability to counter sophisticated cyberattacks is also constantly improving.

Akku MFA uses AI-driven anomaly detection and step-up authentication to deliver adaptive authentication. This achieves the right balance between security and ease of access.

2. Zero Trust Security

Zero Trust Architecture removes implicit trust from access authentication. Users and devices should not be granted access privileges by default. Instead, a policy of minimum access privilege should be followed.

Strong IAMs are built on a foundation of Zero Trust principles. Strict access controls are laid down and followed automatically. These rules could be based on user identity, role or context.

You can maintain tight control over access permissions to move towards a zero trust security strategy with Akku User Lifecycle Manager. This is enforced through granular access controls, continuous authentication, and automated access deprovisioning.

3. Passwordless Authentication

Biometric systems and other authentication methods are replacing traditional passwords, improving security and user experience alike by reducing dependency on weak or reused passwords.

Advanced IAM solutions like Akku Password Manager and Akku MFA enable passwordless authentication for seamless and efficient user access.

By removing password vulnerabilities, businesses reduce risks like phishing and credential theft. Akku supports passwordless login, streamlines security, and helps organizations meet 2025’s cybersecurity demands more effectively.

4. Stricter Data Privacy Regulations

With increasing regulatory scrutiny, organizations must adopt stronger security measures. IAM solutions are essential for ensuring compliance with data privacy regulations.

Akku Access Manager enforces policies to prevent unauthorized access and maintains detailed audit logs for reporting.

It does so by letting you apply access restrictions based on IP address, device, location, and time of access. Akku helps businesses stay compliant while strengthening data protection in a rapidly evolving landscape.

5. Critical Infrastructure Security

Essential services like energy and healthcare are prime targets for cyberattacks. IAM solutions help protect these industries by enforcing strict controls and monitoring system access.

Akku SSO & IdP, Akku Access Manager and Akku MFA lay down privilege guidelines and ensure that only authorized users can access sensitive systems, minimizing the risk of both insider and external threats.

Akku Cloud Directory, Password Manager, and User Lifecycle Manager enable organizations in these critical industries to secure their user identities and streamline access management, providing comprehensive essential infrastructure security.

By investing in the latest IAM technology, organizations can easily cope with the challenges of 2025 and safeguard their valuable assets. Reach out to our team to learn more about the cybersecurity trends for 2025 and how Akku can help you address these new challenges and opportunities.

The AI Revolution: Transforming Cybersecurity

Author: Dinesh

Reading Time: 3 mins

Any conversation you tune in to these days – be it related to business, entertainment, or technology – connects back to artificial intelligence in some way. The advances in natural language processing in the last year or two have made it even easier for laypeople to engage with the tech, and beyond research, writing, and design, the AI revolution has well and truly arrived in cybersecurity technology too.

Here’s a few ways that AI is impacting the world of cybersecurity management.

User behavior tracking

AI-powered IAMs can use user behavior analytics to identify ‘normal’ user behavior patterns and detect deviations or anomalies. AI algorithms undertake continuous analysis of user activity to identify baseline patterns and trends. On this basis, they can flag unusual activity such as unusual login locations or times. As these anomalies may indicate account compromise or fraud, this advance warning lets companies respond promptly.

Threat detection

Using AI in identity and access management, you can automatically analyze significant volumes of threat intelligence data to identify anomalous behavior or patterns. You can even integrate with threat intelligence feeds for real-time security information and threat detection.

By analyzing data such as user behavior, network traffic and logs, AI-powered systems can learn and understand normal user behavior. They are thus able to detect deviations from this norm. The cybersecurity solution can flag suspicious access, fraudulent activity or account compromise, and AI-powered cybersecurity can be trained to block unauthorized access.

Through machine learning, AI in cybersecurity and AI in network security can identify potential vulnerabilities before they’re exploited. This form of proactive threat detection helps businesses better protect their systems. By analyzing code patterns, behavior, and other indicators of compromise, malware detection improves in terms of speed and accuracy.

Intelligent identity and access management

An AI PAM (Privileged Access Management) experience is enhanced by the AI-powered security identity management solution. By monitoring and analyzing privileged user activity, the tool can recommend least privilege principles. This reduces the risk of privilege abuse and insider threats. With contextual information such as user roles, locations, and networks, the tool can make more informed decisions pertaining to access control. Dynamic access management helps businesses enforce highly specific access policies. You can adapt access privileges based on circumstance.

Innovative and adaptive authentication management

With AI-powered IAM systems, you can implement more secure and user-friendly authentication methods, such as behavioral, voice-based, or risk-based authentication. Based on user behavior and device information, AI algorithms can assess risk levels in real-time. This way, you can enable adaptive authentication. The level of security and AI authentication needed for the specific use case and device access varies based on the perceived risk. IAM AI thus balances security and user convenience.

Automated IT support

Through AI-driven IAMs, you can automate user provisioning and de-provisioning processes based on defined policies. By streamlining the identity lifecycle in this way, you reduce the burden on IT administrative staff through AI business process automation. AI is also ‘always on’, and provides automated IT solutions and continuous user activity monitoring. AI monitors access controls and security events, based on which it provides risk assessment and adaptive security measures. This frees up your IT cybersecurity team from such regular monitoring activities and helps improve organization efficiency.

Looking at streamlining cybersecurity identity management? AI and cybersecurity is a complex but interesting field. Talk to our team of experts to learn more about AI in cybersecurity and IAM systems.

Blockchain Technology: A new chapter in Identity & Access Management

Author: Baskar
Reading time: 3 mins

Why do you need an IAM? These tools help businesses manage their corporate identities and each employee’s access to different resources. Typically, these IAMs work based on a centralized database of user names and passwords. Single sign-on (SSO) works with this database to confirm identity and access permissions.

However, this database also becomes a centralized target for malicious actors. Whichever platform you’re using – your IAM solution, Active Directory, or any other identity provider – such a database is a tempting ‘honey pot’, a target for hackers.

Enter the Blockchain IAM

Blockchain-based IAM solutions will be able to authenticate identity without the use of passwords. Based on your organization’s DID (decentralized identifier), blockchain credentials will be recorded and tracked on the distributed, shared, immutable blockchain ledger. The public key will be stored on the blockchain servers, while the private key will be pushed to user.

In the case of Akku’s upcoming blockchain version, employees will need to enter their DID on an Akku app on their smartphone. A private key will then be pushed to their device, activating access to the app on that device, which can be used to enable login and access to all corporate assets.

Managing digital identities without a single point of vulnerability

Using the Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) model, digital identities can be managed in a distributed ledger system. This ensures that there’s no single point of vulnerability for hackers to attack. Your user credentials are secured with the tamper-proof distributed ledger.

Since blockchain-recorded credentials are recorded in a distributed ledger, they cannot be altered or impersonated. This guarantees integrity of identity during authentication, and you can be sure that your authenticated users are really who they say they are.

An additional layer of security is guaranteed through passwordless authentication.

Prevention of user impersonation through passwordless authentication

Since there are no passwords involved in the user authentication process, there is no risk of passwords being compromised or hacked. Our QR code-based passwordless authentication process is seamless, immediate and extremely secure. In addition, the authentication process also offers a seamless user experience.

As we move beyond passwords for authentication, you gain a number of benefits:

Security from easy-to-hack passwords, poor password policy compliance, common passwords, etc
Streamlined login process as they avoid password resets and other requests to IT support team
No risk of compromised passwords and user impersonation

The blockchain is the next big thing in cybersecurity, and Akku is excited to be at the forefront of this revolution. The private decentralized, immutable ledger feature of blockchain technology changes the IAM landscape considerably.

Talk to our team of experts about how to get started on your blockchain journey. Get in touch with us today.

Security isn’t a one-time investment: 3 key areas where most organizations fail

Your management team says that the time has come to invest in your organization’s cybersecurity. Your operations team agrees and says they are committed to security. Your IT team says that an IAM would help to secure your data and application, and identifies customizable IAM solutions, such as Akku, for investment.

So far, so good. But does that complete the job from your team’s end?

Even if your organization’s management and users believe that they are totally committed to improving cybersecurity, many of our recent IAM implementations have brought up some interesting issues of organization productivity.

Low priority on training

Many corporates believe that their employees – young, apparently tech-savvy, living in metropolitan areas – are sufficiently aware of all necessary cybersecurity measures. They believe that their teams are equipped to set up strong passwords, manage their own multi-factor authentication, avoid phishing attacks and browse through only secure web pages.

Some businesses, especially very large enterprises, do understand that cybersecurity training is necessary. However, others (regardless of size) often don’t feel it’s important for workers to take time out from their regular routines to focus on security. This is a prioritization issue, not one of budgets or resources. It can result in a number of security issues, including in terms of secure access to applications and data. No matter how technologically aware your team is, no one knows everything. It’s important to keep your learners up-to-date with regular cybersecurity training.

Fear of adoption

For a simple example, consider single sign-on (SSO). Single sign-on is an efficient way to log on to multiple applications. Using 2FA or MFA (two-factor or multi-factor authentication), single sign-on is secure as well as easy. However, if your team has never used such tech before, it can be bewildering. In our experience, 75-80% of corporate users don’t know how to use SSO without training. Post implementation of Akku, our team has occasionally offered training on how to use SSO and multi-factor authentication in the past.

When we speak to our customers, we find that in many cases, fear of adoption is a bigger hurdle than cost of implementation or features provided by the IAM. They believe that their workers simply don’t know how to use MFA, and that it’s too much effort to provide regular updates and training to fix this gap.

In our experience, fear of adoption prevents more investments in cybersecurity applications than budget or other concerns.

Prioritizing productivity over security

While Akku or other IAM solutions secure access to applications and data, there is a certain amount of involvement needed from your IT team. A classic example is the password change self-service functionality. This functionality allows your users to manage, update and change their own passwords.

At Akku, our policy is against self-service for password management. This is an intentional choice as it risks allowing users to set weak security questions or repeat common passwords used in other personal accounts. This, further, risks hacking through social engineering or credential stuffing attacks. In addition, when users know that they can reset their passwords at any time, they feel that their responsibility to secure their account and credentials is not as urgent. When they have to disturb their IT administrator every time they forget their password, this feels like a much more serious problem!

However, centralization of password management is inefficient for IT admin teams. In our experience, around 0.2% of users forget their passwords, every day. For an enterprise of 5,000 users, that results in upto 10 password reset requests, every day. As a result, some organizations tend to prioritize team efficiency or productivity over cybersecurity, by allowing users to manage their own passwords.

This raises the question: are you prioritizing your cybersecurity or team productivity? At the end of the day, you are responsible for your own cybersecurity. Taking the decision to invest in Akku or any other security infrastructure is an important step, but you need to keep the focus on cybersecurity on an ongoing basis.

Security is a long term commitment, not addressed by a single investment. Talk to our team today for a holistic consultation on the next steps towards a more secure organization.

What is Open Policy Agent and how do you use it in cloud-native environments?

Open Policy Agent (OPA) helps you to increase application security and to reduce the risk of unauthorized access to sensitive data even in case of a breach of the application.

It achieves this by simplifying access authentication and authorization within the application architecture, which in turn secures internal communication and access.

Many multinational corporations are using Open Policy Agent in their IT operations to establish, validate and enforce access control and security policies across the architecture of the application, thus allowing them to customize and strengthen security strategies for the application.

Why should Open Policy Agent matter to your business?

Take, for instance, edge security, which is used to protect corporate resources, users, and apps at the “edge” of your company’s network, where sensitive data is highly vulnerable to security threats. The edge security model trusts all internal communication and checks a user identity only at an ingress API-Gateway.

With Open Policy Agent it is possible to plug this gap by building a distributed authorization as close to a data source as possible without having to build the authorization logic directly into services. That increases security at every level of your application.

Here’s how major enterprises are using OPA

Goldman Sachs uses Open Policy Agent to enforce admission control policies in their Kubernetes clusters as well as for provisioning Role-based access control and Quota resources central to their security.
Google Cloud uses Open Policy Agent to validate configurations in several products and tools including Anthos Config Management and GKE Policy Automation.
Netflix uses Open Policy Agent to enforce access control in microservices across languages and frameworks in their cloud infrastructure and to bring in contextual data from remote resources to evaluate policies.

But what is OPA, exactly?

Open Policy Agent (OPA) is a tool that helps you write and test policy-as-code for Kubernetes to improve operational efficiency and promote scalability and repeatability. OPA decouples policies from application configurations and provides policy-as-a-service. Since this engine unifies policy enforcement across the stack, it allows security, risk, and compliance teams to adopt a DevOps methodology to express desired policy outcomes as code as well as offload policy decision-making from software. Created by Styra, and now part of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) alongside other CNCF technologies like Kubernetes and Prometheus, OPA is an open source, general-purpose policy engine.

When and How can OPA be used to improve your IT Ops?

Infrastructure Authorization

You can use make all elements of your application infrastructure more secure using OPA.

OPA enforces and monitors security policies across all relevant components. For instance, you can centralize compliance across Kubernetes and application programming interface (API) gateways.

With Open Policy Agent, you can add authorization policies directly into the service mesh, thereby limiting lateral movement across a microservice architecture. That way, since authorization is required at entry to every microservice, improper access to one microservice does not necessarily compromise others.

(You can learn more about Service Mesh and how it can help you with cluster security here and here.)

Admission Controller

You can control admission to your resources by working with an OPA-powered Gatekeeper.

Azure Gatekeeper and other Kubernetes policy controllers work with OPA to allow you to define policy to enforce which fields and values are permitted in Kubernetes resources. They can mutate resources.

A common example of a mutation policy would be changing privileged Pods to be unprivileged, or setting imagePullPolicy to Always for all Pods. When you’re able to mutate resources server-side, it’s a really easy way to enforce best practices, apply standard labeling, or simply apply a baseline security policy to all resources.

Azure Gatekeeper for example is a Kubernetes policy controller that allows you to define policy to enforce which fields and values are permitted in Kubernetes resources. It operates as a Kubernetes admission controller and utilizes Open Policy Agent as its policy engine to ensure resources are compliant with policy before they can be successfully created.

Application Authorization

With the level of automation OPA provides, your team can make changes with the confidence that access authorization will remain accurate.

Since Open Policy Agent uses a declarative policy language that lets you write and enforce rules, it comes with tools that can help integrate policies into applications as well as grant end users permissions to contribute policies for tenants. This enforces policies across organizations for end-user authorization with the OPA deciding level of user access in the application.

Open Policy Agent is also used to resolve problems around service-level authorization to control who can do what at different parts of the stack.

What are the advantages of using OPA?

The OPA policy improves operational efficiency, allows for virtually unlimited scalability, eases interpretation, offers version control, and ensures repeatability. It essentially provides a uniform, systematic means of managing policies as well as auditing and validating them to avoid the risk of introducing critical errors into production environments. That’s because in Kubernetes, policies are best defined in code and OPA allows you to write and validate policy-as-code.

By leveraging code-based automation instead of relying on manual processes to manage policies, your team can move more quickly and reduce the potential for mistakes due to human error. At the same time, your application architecture remains absolutely secure. Want to know more about how OPA can make your business more efficient? Contact us at Akku.

Here’s why your apps built with no-code platforms need an external IAM

Have you heard of no-code application builders? They are ideal for minor applications without heavy technological requirements. These no-code apps can be taken to market much faster, are cheaper to develop and can deliver a great experience in many cases.

However, while they are easy to build and use, securing apps made with a no-code app builder requires an external IAM.

Access management for internal applications

Consider a desktop-based application such as MS Access, which is used for combining, processing and editing large groups of data from different sources. It’s largely being replaced by web-based equivalents. This kind of small internal application has a clear function, and is therefore easy to build using a no-code development tool.

Internal applications such as data management tools, onboarding tools and other HR applications are often considered lower priority as they are purely internal in use. Therefore, low-budget no-code app builder tools are used in these cases.

However, these applications process a great deal of valuable internal data, and it’s important to take their security seriously and guard access to them. That’s why it’s important to implement a strong IAM tool for all your internal-facing applications.

The risk of web-based applications

With web-based apps, whether or not it’s developed with a no-code tool, you have the freedom to deploy the application on cloud servers on flexible pricing models, and access them from anywhere. Since such apps are hosted on the cloud, it can be risky to access them directly without a VPN.

Tiny no-code app builders don’t invest the necessary time and effort into security and privacy, which is why it’s difficult to set up good protection for such apps. Additionally, the user working on a no-code app builder typically doesn’t have the necessary time and knowledge to do so.

Syncing your IAM

While some well-known no-code app builders offer plugins to integrate with external IAM through SAML and OAuth2, others do not. In cases where such plugins exist, you can use any external IAM system.

When the plugins do not exist, however, and especially in cases where you would rather reduce the coding footprint of your project, consider an IAM product like Akku. Since Akku is a customizable solution, you can use it as a gateway for any major or minor internal or external application, even when the app being used does not support SAML, OAuth2 or OIDC.

Your minor internal applications often contain or process the most valuable data at your organization. Protect them with an external IAM that’s easy to set up, integrates with any setup, and restricts access to these key internal corporate resources. Protect them with Akku, the customizable IAM.

Maintaining in-house control of your digital access gateways

Unless you have the right kind of access control, you don’t have ownership of your assets. For digital assets, you also need a proper access gateway, which should not be under third-party control for storage and management. That’s because losing access keys means losing control of assets. With digital gateways, one can access the assets without needing to know where the keys are. It is very important to always keep these gateways running, disaster-free and tamper-free, and free of vendor lock.

Digital vaults

In a smart society and business set-up, every person has the right to their own digital vault to store their digital keys, with a common gateway to access all their assets. This digital gateway should be tamper-free, immutable and self-sovereign. You need a reliable, dependable single gateway for all digital assets wherever they are, with distributed and decentralized systems.

Multi-cloud data storage

Cloud computing makes this possible, as it works with distributed and elastic principles itself. Data can be distributed into multi-cloud platforms. One can build need-based custom IAMs for digital gateways by spanning its infrastructure into a multi-cloud environment with distributed storage like Hadoop and distributed databases with hash sharding, as distributed technology has self-balancing and auto-scaling features.

In-house or third-party?

It is extremely complex to build such a system manually. Instead, you can achieve the same result with the Google Anthos multi-cloud platform. As it can work on other cloud platforms as well as on on-prem platforms, it is vendor-lock-free.

Google Anthos

Since Anthos is a multi-cloud platform, you are not forced to depend on specific highly integrated tools specific to that cloud service provider. Rather than siloize each cloud environment, you can use Anthos to deploy and manage workloads to multiple cloud platforms. Google Anthos allows the creation of Kubernetes clusters in both AWS and Azure environments.

For any organization to keep its digital world alive and healthy, this kind of multi-cloud environment with hybrid cloud architecture is required. It might be the foundation of the smart world.

At CloudNow – creators of the Akku Identity and Access Management solution – we understand the importance of maintaining the sustainability and privacy of digital gateways, the real holder of all digital assets. Contact our team to learn more about how to implement a cloud-based access control system that works for your organization.

When should you implement an IAM solution?

In which stage of the user or employee lifecycle should an IAM solution ideally be implemented? The answer is: Right at the beginning, during onboarding. When the IAM is implemented early, it becomes part of the organization’s culture and ethos.

Provisioning and onboarding

Access to necessary applications and data needs to be provisioned as soon as the employee is onboarded. When an IAM is not used, access may be provisioned improperly with the intent to keep track manually and perform proper provisioning later.

For enterprise-level organizations with a huge number of employees, this causes issues at a later stage, as you may not have a proper record of the rights provided to each individual. When access provisioning is done properly with an IAM, access privileges will be tracked automatically to keep track of what access is and is not given to each employee.

Redundant data capture is also a real problem as the same data is entered by the new employee in the HRMS and then in the IAM for provisioning. By using a single platform, the redundancy is eliminated.

Single-platform onboarding

Instead of onboarding through multiple tools such as an HRMS or ERP, you can complete onboarding through a single platform – an IAM, such as Akku. You can also integrate your HRMS with Akku’s REST API, if you prefer. When using Akku for onboarding, your employees can upload all required induction documents through the IAM dashboard itself. This could include proof of identity documents, experience certificates, etc. Akku also allows you to set deadlines and schedule reminders for each employee.

Why choose Akku?

Many businesses choose to work with Active Directory to simplify onboarding. However, there are certain issues with AD, including non-seamless remote working and of course, the enterprise-level costing.

Additionally, in as much as 50-70 percent of cases, in our experience, employees are brought in via a different tool and then asked to provide details on IAM as well. Instead, you can streamline the process with Akku, a tool that allows single-point data capture for onboarding.

How does a true PAM work?

A Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution helps to secure and control privileged access to critical software and assets. Credentials and specific levels of access to various applications are provided through the PAM.

Usually, organizations implement PAM only for authorization and de-authorization of access to the apps. For instance, let’s say a new employee needs access to Gmail, Jira, and your CRM. Typically, organizations only provide access when the employee joins, and revoke it when he or she leaves. This can be done by a simple Identity and Access Management (IAM) solution – however, a PAM can do much more. (Quick side note: Akku serves both PAM and IAM needs.)

Here are some of the key functions that a PAM solution generally serves.

1. Assigning specific rights and access privileges

On each SaaS platform, what rights does each employee have? For example, take the CRM. Can they add and delete workflows? Is an individual user to be a super-administrator? Do they need to be allowed only to create contacts, but disallowed from editing or deleting?

Access may also be changed for the employee as they grow within the organization. When the employee is promoted, they may get additional responsibilities. For instance, a sales executive may not be allowed to edit contacts, but once promoted as a sales manager, this permission may become necessary.

You need not go to the CRM to make these changes – you can do so directly from your PAM platform. An IAM and PAM tool (like Akku) will allow you to manage changes to access permissions such as these from a single dashboard, with a single click.

2. Deprovisioning access

The day an employee leaves an organization, the IT team usually uses their generic IAM to revoke access to all SaaS apps (Gmail and Freshdesk, for example).

However, by doing this, only the IAM gateway to the app is deactivated: the license on the application itself remains. That means that the subscription charges continue on, as well, unless you go to the SaaS platform and delete the license there.

A true PAM directly deletes the license on Gmail or Freshdesk as well. It also follows the same exit procedure as that of the app itself. For instance, Gmail allows you to back-up email data to an email account of your choice before deleting the account. A professional IAM and PAM tool like Akku does the same, following the same laid-down process of the application.

By directly deleting the license on the application platform itself, you can be sure that you won’t waste money on subscription charges due to human error. This kind of automation is essential for enterprise-level customers. As they have a huge number of licenses, it is impossible to manually track the licenses in use and those no longer required. As a result, enterprises may realize that such a costly error has occurred only after subscription fees have built up!

The PAM also prompts you when you’re not using a license, upon which you can delete the license through the PAM.

Akku is a customizable IAM and PAM solution with user-friendly features that can be configured based on your specific requirements. Our team is well equipped to help you implement PAM at your organization and get the most out of it. Let’s talk.

The Goldilocks Zone of Content Restriction: Not too wide, not too narrow, but just right

Do you need to restrict content for your employees? Or can you allow them complete and free access to the worldwide web? There’s simply too much information out there, which can result in distraction and lowered productivity. At the same time, too many restrictions can make your team feel suffocated!

It’s important to strike a balance between allowing your team to access the information they need or may need, and keeping your company’s reputation clean by blocking illicit, illegal or unnecessary material.

Here’s a quick ready reckoner to help you plan your company’s content restriction strategy.

What content do you really need?

Let’s say your organization works in the e-learning space. Your team will need to use the internet to better understand some of the content inputs that they’ve received from their client. They’ll need to watch YouTube videos on how to create specific interactive elements. They may need to read technical papers on gamification and game-based learning, in order to stay updated and create content that will make an impact. They’ll also need to refer to material created by competitors, including promotional material put up by them on social media, to position the client’s product in the available learning gaps. These are essential content categories that the employee must be able to access.

What content might you need?

Many employees find that they are more effective if they work while listening to music. For their safety, it’s important to allow them access to the news and local weather updates. You could consider a midway solution by allowing access to audio-only music options, and restricting access to reputed news sites alone – and the amount of time that employees can spend on the site.

Perhaps the most controversial content category is viral social media. Would it help your team to be able to include the latest viral moment in the e-learning content, to keep it relevant and topical? If so, how do you allow access to viral content without losing employee productivity? Can you put a time cap on certain applications or websites?

What content do you definitely NOT need?

Access to personal email is a security risk as much as a productivity issue.

Entertainment content can waste a great deal of time and company bandwidth.

Illegal or illicit material found on official systems and networks can also impact your company’s reputation.

Can this be controlled by blacklisting certain URLs?

No, unfortunately not!

A lot of the video content your employees may need is on YouTube. So is a lot of the content that they don’t! Similarly, personal email may be accessed through the same URL as professional email.

Not to mention that blacklisting thousands – or even millions – of URLs is simply impractical. A more refined solution is required.

Whitelisting specific content categories

The kinds of content that you want to allow your team to access depends on the kind of work your company does. Each category of employee will also need different kinds of content access.

Open source content categorizations for websites and video streaming portals are available online. It is possible to restrict access to content – whether on YouTube or on the internet at large – based on this categorization.

This makes for a much more relevant form of content access control, with necessary content types remaining accessible while irrelevant content is blocked. This helps to save company bandwidth and unproductive employee time.

Wondering how to create content restrictions for your business? Allow our experts to help you. You can set up personalized content filters with Akku, a 100% customizable IAM.