Workforce Identity FAQs | Entrust (2024)

Workforce Identity refers to a comprehensive set of technologies, policies, and processes designed to manage and secure employee identities within an organization. It includes identification, authentication, and authorization mechanisms to ensure employees have appropriate access to corporate resources based on their roles and responsibilities.

Workforce Identity is important because it helps safeguard an organization's digital assets by ensuring that only verified and authorized employees can access sensitive information. It mitigates risks associated with data breaches, insider threats, phishing attacks, and cyberattacks, supporting a Zero Trust security framework.

Workforce Identity enhances security by implementing strong authentication methods, such as passwordless and MFA options using AI-driven biometrics, and employing risk-based adaptive authentication to verify users based on contextual information. This layered approach significantly reduces the risk of credential compromise and unauthorized access.

Biometrics are important in Workforce Identity because they provide the highest assurance authentication, especially for high-risk transactions. They enable accurate identity verification and secure privileged actions, ensuring that only verified users have access to critical resources. Enterprise-controlled biometrics enhance security by preventing unauthorized access and reducing the risk of fraud.

Workforce Identity supports a Zero Trust architecture by ensuring that every user and device is verified and authenticated at each access request. This approach limits access to sensitive information to verified and authorized users only, reducing the potential for breaches.

Adaptive risk-based authentication (RBA) evaluates contextual factors such as IP address, geolocation, and behavioral biometrics to assess user risk. It dynamically adjusts security measures, requiring additional authentication or blocking access when risk levels are high, enhancing overall security.

Workforce Identity improves user experience by offering seamless and secure authentication methods like passwordless and biometric authentication. These methods are more convenient and reduce the friction associated with traditional password-based systems.

Most enterprise MFA solutions are inadequate for modern attacks. Phishing-resistant identity ensures that authentication methods are robust against phishing attacks, social engineering attacks, and credential compromise. Techniques like certificate-based authentication, risk-based authentication, and AI-driven biometrics provide high assurance that only legitimate users can access resources.

The Entrust Workforce Identity Solution streamlines digital onboarding with integrated global identity verification, passwordless MFA, account creation, identity workflow and orchestration, and digital signing capabilities. This comprehensive approach simplifies user registration and enhances fraud prevention.

Workforce Identity addresses challenges such as managing diverse user identities and access privileges, preventing credential compromise, mitigating insider threats, enabling single sign-on (SSO), and helping to ensure compliance with security policies and regulations.

Workforce Identity solutions benefit executive leaders (CIO, CTO, CISO) in digital infrastructure, governance and security executives, infrastructure architects, process integrators, and risk and compliance technologists by enhancing security, compliance, and operational efficiency.

Entrust enhances existing IdP solutions such as Okta and Microsoft by providing high-assurance identity verification with certificate-based authentication, risk-based adaptive authentication, and AI-driven biometrics. This enhancement strengthens overall security and compliance.

Enabling self-serve password reset can significantly reduce helpdesk costs and improve productivity. Gartner® estimates that the average cost of a single password reset done by the helpdesk is about $70, and 20% to 50% of all helpdesk calls are for password resets. Implementing self-serve password reset can save these costs, leading to substantial financial savings and increased operational efficiency. Additionally, it reduces the cost of time lost due to lost passwords and lockouts.

Workforce Identity helps organizations meet regulatory requirements for secure authentication and access management. By implementing robust authentication methods and identity verification processes, organizations can comply with industry standards and avoid penalties.

Consolidating Workforce IAM under a single vendor offers several benefits, including a unified high assurance security solution, simplified management, and better total cost of ownership (TCO) and return on investment (ROI). A single vendor approach ensures all identity and access management needs are met with consistent security policies and seamless integration across systems.

Workforce Identity ensures secure access to cloud applications by integrating VPN and RADIUS authentication. VPN provides encrypted access for remote devices, allowing secure connection to the corporate network. RADIUS adds an extra layer of security by authenticating users before granting access to network resources. This combination ensures that only authorized users can securely access cloud applications and other corporate resources.