Identity security plays a pivotal role in today’s interconnected digital landscape, reshaping enterprise strategies by shifting from traditional perimeters to identity-based frameworks.

Permissions and entitlements have emerged as critical components in securing access to data, especially in cloud and software-as-a-service environments. As organizations manage vast amounts of sensitive information across distributed systems, ensuring stronger identity security has become essential. Addressing these challenges requires not just visibility into access permissions but also actionable insights to harmonize security practices across human and non-human identities.

“Identity is the biggest attack vector, identity is the perimeter, and if you look at what is the purest form of identity, it’s permissions and entitlements,” said Tarun Thakur (pictured), co-founder and chief executive officer of Veza Inc.

Thakur spoke with theCUBE Research’s John Furrier for theCUBE’s “Cloud AWS re:Invent Coverage,” during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how Veza is addressing the challenges posed by evolving access management needs, focusing on creating solutions for enterprises to improve visibility and secure their data effectively. (* Disclosure below) 

Enhancing visibility while prioritizing identity security in access management

As enterprises increasingly migrate to the cloud, they face growing complexity in managing both human and non-human identities. These identities pose unique challenges to maintaining security and compliance. There is a lack of centralized repositories for managing these permissions, particularly in distributed environments, according to Thakur.

“Every identity in the cloud is privileged … and where it gets very challenging is there is no central repository, there is no active directory for non-human identities,” he explained. “So, where can I go look? Just the visualization, that power of showing [organizations] the access permissions … That visualization layer, that intelligent layer is very powerful. Some of our customers say it’s like turning on light in a dark room.”

To address this complexity, Veza has developed a solution that integrates data across SaaS platforms, cloud environments and legacy systems. By leveraging a unified access graph, Veza provides enterprises with the tools to harmonize identity management practices while maintaining visibility and control. This graph-based approach simplifies the process of identifying who has access to what resources and their associated permissions, enabling organizations to act decisively.

“Our core differentiation of what we built is a data model, … [and] we call it the Veza Access Graph, … and what we have done is can we help organizations in a matter of minutes, in a matter of seconds, [identify] who [is] in your organization … and what actions can they perform in an effective truth to systems and data spread all over the enterprise,” Thakur said. “We now have close to 300 integrations, not only your SaaS, but also things like Oracle databases, things like PeopleSoft. That brings us another level of moat, another level of applicability.”

Veza’s commitment to simplifying access management is evident in its latest innovations, which aim to address productivity and security simultaneously. Self-service solutions empower users to request and manage permissions while adhering to the principle of least-privileged, ensuring minimal access necessary to perform tasks, according to Thakur.

“The theme behind the Access Requests is productivity, ease of end user experience; a click button, one click button. And number three, which is probably the closest to our souls, is access which is least privileged from day one,” he said.

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s “Cloud AWS re:Invent Coverage”:

(* Disclosure: Veza Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Veza Inc. nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE