Category: Why Akku

Where Traditional IAMs Fall Short – And How Akku Brings Flexibility

Businesses in any industry face security and compliance issues. However, security requirements and priorities are not the same across the board. Identity and access management (IAM) represents an important part of the solution to these challenges, but again, a cookie-cutter approach to IAM does not address the unique needs of each business.

The Fatal Flaw of Traditional IAM Systems

The problem? Most IAM solutions out there lack the business flexibility you need. Your IT team has to compromise and use a rigid, all-in-one solution that may still leave security gaps because it can’t adjust to specific needs.

  • Just looking for a way to get a multi-factor authentication up and running? You’re stuck paying for a suite of other features that come with the package.
  • Struggling with a custom integration for an internal app? That’s a ‘you’ problem that your IAM provider doesn’t want to get their hands dirty with.
  • Need to create a customized approach to an IAM feature because you have a unique process? You’re out of luck – what’s available straight out of the box is what you need to work with.

One-Size-Fits-All Doesn’t Work for Security

Solutions from most top IAM vendors follow a one-size-fits-all approach. Their products are built to make them everything-for-everyone, rather than to be the optimal solution to your specific business requirements. 

Although these IAM providers have good reputations and excellent products, they don’t tailor their solutions to your needs. 

That’s fine for some, but not if your business requires specific security solutions, or if you are prioritizing certain aspects of your security posture based on budgets and lifecycle status. If that’s you, you’ll find that you end up paying for features you don’t need or fighting with tools that don’t fit your operations.

The downsides of this approach are clear:

  • Higher costs – Companies pay for multiple licenses or features they don’t need.
  • Rigid feature set – Your company processes have to adjust to suit the IAM, not the other way around.
  • Operational inefficiencies – Too many features can confuse users in their daily operations.

Why Flexibility Matters

In contrast to off-the-shelf IAM products, a flexible IAM platform enables businesses to establish access policies in accordance with their true needs. Your security policies and tools need to meet your business needs, and not be limited to the framework that your IAM vendor dictates.

With a flexible IAM solution:

  • You set the rules for your organization, not a third-party provider
  • You only pay for features you really need.
  • Your IAM fits your needs like a glove, driving operational efficiency and optimal security.

Akku – the Flexible IAM

Akku is designed to be highly flexible and customizable. In contrast to competitors, Akku enables your business to pick and choose only the features you require. Its modular design keeps you in complete control of access management without unnecessary overhead.

And taking this further, Akku even enables complete feature customization within each of our IAM modules, leaving you in complete control of your own security posture. If Akku’s features don’t meet your needs exactly, we’ll build you the customized functionality you need.

Customization extends to custom integrations too, with our team of experts on hand to help you integrate Akku with every one of your apps.

Most organizations pick from the most popular IAM brands, just because they are the biggest names. But the question remains – do they really fit your requirements? Should you be adjusting to suit the IAM, or should it be the other way around?

Don’t accept a rigid, pre-packaged solution. Adopt a flexible IAM solution like Akku.

Ready to streamline your IAM approach? Get in touch with our experts today for a demo.

Startups to Enterprises: How Akku Meets Different Business Needs

Small, mid-sized, and large enterprises face different challenges with access management. From limited resources to scaling complexities to sprawling organizational structures, the differing needs of businesses at each phase of growth call for a tailored solution. 

In this blog, let’s explore how Akku empowers businesses of every size.

For Startups: Easy Setup, Powerful Security

The Challenge

As a startup or small-scale business, you may not have a large IT team or the technical skills to manage a complicated security system. But just like larger enterprises, your business too faces cyber risks. That’s why you need a security solution that’s simple, effective, and helps keep you safe while you focus on growing your business – without the need for technical expertise.

How Akku Helps

  • Quick IAM Setup with Minimal Technical Complexity: Akku simplifies the onboarding process, ensuring startups can get started without advanced technical know-how. Akku’s 500+ pre-built app connectors, user-friendly interface, and ease of setup allow small businesses to implement a robust IAM faster.
  • High Value-for-Money IAM Solutions: Budget constraints are a fact of life for small businesses. Akku offers plans that offer tremendous value and help you keep data security strong without breaking the bank.
  • Strong Foundational Security Measures: Akku helps you streamline access management and implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) – these are vital tools to build a strong security foundation at your business.

For Mid-Size Businesses: Security balanced with Efficiency

The Challenge

As businesses grow bigger, operations become more complex. In addition to the concerns of smaller businesses, your mid-sized business needs to balance the need for stronger security with the importance of maintaining operational efficiency. The right IAM will support your growth while keeping operations secure and efficient.

How Akku Helps

  • Robust Authentication Security: Akku helps you enforce MFA as well as strong employee password policies, keeping the login process secure across the board for your growing time. And the option of passwordless authentication goes even further towards eliminating the risk of password misuse/abuse.
  • Efficient Application Access: As your business scales, the number of applications your teams use tends to rise exponentially. The result is significant friction in the user access process. With Akku’s robust single sign-on (SSO), access to applications is a matter of a single click, enabling increased productivity for users and administrators.
  • Improved Flexibility through Modular IAM Solutions: With evolving business priorities, Akku’s modular IAM solutions give you the flexibility to invest in the tools you need now, and add on functionalities as the business grows.

    For Enterprises: Streamlining Access & Reducing IT Admin Workloads

    The Challenge

    Thousands of employees across multiple departments, and numerous roles and designations are key characteristics of large enterprises that give rise to unique IAM challenges. These dynamics place a heavy load on your IT admin team, and make managing access time-consuming and prone to error. At the same time, the business also needs to comply with strict security policies and regulations.

    How Akku Helps

     

  • Automated Provisioning and Deprovisioning: By automating provisioning and deprovisioning, Akku massively reduces the workload for IT administrators and ensures no risk of human error. Employees are granted access to the systems and data they require promptly, improving productivity, while former employees lose access with a single stroke, securing systems.
  • Increased Productivity with Self-Service Password Management: Password recovery requests can overwhelm the IT function as your team sizes increase. Akku’s self-service password management system allows users to generate and update their own passwords, in compliance with custom policies. This improves productivity by cutting out wait time, while IT administrators save a significant amount of time.
  • Streamlined Data and Analytics for Audit: Akku offers a centralized platform to manage access across the organization, which also means it is a centralized point of data collection. Akku’s advanced reporting and analytics tools use this data to provide single-window visibility into access patterns, enabling informed decision-making. This also provides verifiable proof of compliance with security and data privacy regulations.

Improve security and streamline operations as you focus on growth – regardless of the size of your business. Ask for a demo today!

Akku Vs. Okta – Understand Before you Choose

Akku and Okta are both highly efficient cloud security solutions that strive to help companies manage and secure user authentication on applications in their network, and to transform their customer experiences. Here are a few key differences between the features of Akku and Okta. 

Single Sign-on

Akku’s requires only a one-click login for universal login access for all applications. This ensures both high security and productivity.

Okta’s one-click authentication has made user login process 50 times faster. This user-friendly and customizable feature uses OTP to access to 5,500 pre-installed applications, ensuring direct navigation. 

Multi-factor Authentication (MFA)

Akku’s MFA is simple, inexpensive, and easy-to-use. It provides multiple layers of security to the sign-in process using Time-based OTP (TOTP) and push notification. The former generates passwords every 30 seconds while the latter generates notifications to authorize login attempts.

Okta’s MFA is secure, simple, and intelligent. It verifies access using user’s knowledge, possession, and biometric factors instead of passwords. It also generates security questions, OTPs, and push notifications for a user’s authentication.

Content Filtering

Akku offers a customizable content filtering feature that ensures high productivity across your organization while improving network security. This functionality prevents employees from accessing and browsing irrelevant websites during office hours and prevents distractions and aids in providing secure network access.

Akku prevents your employees from accessing irrelevant YouTube videos which can affect employee productivity and blacklists their personal email id from being accessed using your network or systems.

Okta, unlike Akku, does not provide any content filtering features.

Time- and Location-based Restriction

While providing access to users anytime from anywhere is necessary, it is important to make sure that this feature does not compromise on security. With Akku’s time- and location-based restriction feature, security will always be on guard to restrict unusual user activities. It also restricts access to your network from specific geo-locations to prevent potential security breaches.

Okta does not offer standard products that provide time- and location-based restriction capabilities.

Password Policy Management 

Through this feature, Akku allows you to set a minimum requirement for password standardization. This prevents anyone in your organization from possibly setting weak or easy-to-hack passwords. This also allows for password consistency across your organization.

Okta comes with a password policy standardizer which is similar to Akku’s.

Internal Communications

This feature ensures end-to-end communication between the management and the employees. This feature sends push notifications to the employees for each announcement. These notifications appear as soon as a user logs in, to ensure he does not miss any information. To ensure a response from the employee’s side, it restricts action until he has read and replied to the message. This also helps you in ensuring standards compliance across your organization without any gaps.

Okta does not have a well-structured internal communications system like that of Akku.

Akku, a product by CloudNow Technologies, is a robust identity and access management solution that helps improve data security and productivity and ensures transparency and control in tandem. For the modern organization, it is crucial to maximize security, compliance and productivity across your organization and Akku’s features are specifically built around that purpose. Contact us today to know more about how Akku can help you secure your network.

All the information presented in this article is accurate as of May 5th, 2019.

Akku’s Agentless AD Connector For Improved Security

The AD connector which comes with Akku, allows organizations to use either their on-prem AD or Azure AD as the data source for authentication. Akku’s AD is agentless, which means that no additional software is installed in the client environment. Continue reading Akku’s Agentless AD Connector For Improved Security

Agent-based Cloud Security Solution? No thanks!

If your organization relies on the cloud for a majority of its operations, you may want to look closer at the type of architecture your security solution uses – whether it is agent-based or agentless. While some might say that it is irrelevant and that you should focus only on the security solution’s efficiency, we beg to differ. Picking the right kind of cloud security solution can drastically affect your organization’s day-to-day operations and how much ownership you can take over the security solution. Continue reading Agent-based Cloud Security Solution? No thanks!

To Implement or Ignore: MFA for Custom Apps & Websites

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is one of the most highly recommended security measures in this age of brute-force attacks, data breaches and other such cyber attacks. And while some off-the-shelf SaaS applications may already come with a built-in MFA feature, when it comes to a custom-built application or website, businesses have to make the tough decision between reinforced security and the high cost at which it comes.

Continue reading To Implement or Ignore: MFA for Custom Apps & Websites