What Is Identity Orchestration?
Identity orchestration is an Identity and Access Management (IAM) approach that automates managing and securing digital identities across diverse platforms, primarily multi-cloud environments. It coordinates identity-related tasks such as:
Authentication
Authorization
Provisioning and de‑provisioning
Password management
Policy enforcement across multiple systems and applications
For example, when new employees join a company, they often need access to many systems. Manually provisioning each system is time-consuming and error-prone. When they leave, failing to de‑provision access can lead to unauthorized access.
By automating these processes through identity orchestration, companies can:
Streamline identity and access management
Reduce the risk of security breaches
Ensure compliance with regulations
Enhance the user experience with seamless access to required resources
Identity Management Problems Solved by Orchestration
Identity orchestration addresses several critical challenges:
Scalability: As organizations grow and add more systems and applications, managing identities becomes complex and time-consuming. Orchestration automates and streamlines this process, making it easier to scale.
Security: Manual identity management can lead to errors, such as failing to de‑provision a former employee’s access, creating vulnerabilities. Automated provisioning and de‑provisioning help mitigate these risks.
Consistency: Ensuring consistent access rights across multiple systems and applications is challenging. Orchestration centralizes and automates access policies for more consistent enforcement.
Compliance: Many industries have strict regulations governing who can access specific data types. Orchestration platforms provide robust auditing capabilities to help demonstrate compliance.
User Experience: Users often need to remember multiple credentials, causing password fatigue and lost productivity. With features like SSO, orchestration can offer a seamless user experience.
Efficiency: Manual identity management tasks consume significant IT resources. Automation frees IT teams to focus on higher‑value activities.
Visibility: Traditional IAM approaches can make it hard to see who has access to what. Orchestration platforms usually provide a unified dashboard showing access rights across the organization.
How Does Identity Orchestration Work?
Common building blocks:
Integration: The orchestration platform connects to all target systems and applications—email, HR, databases, cloud platforms, SaaS apps, and more.
Policy Setting: Access policies are defined based on role, behavior, and attributes such as time, date, location, device posture, or risk level.
Automation: Provisioning, de‑provisioning, onboarding, and security workflows are automated according to policy, reducing manual work and errors.
Authentication and Authorization: The platform coordinates user authentication (verifying identity) and authorization (controlling access) across systems based on policies.
Audit and Compliance: Detailed logs are kept for all identity and access activities, supporting audits, forensics, and regulatory reporting.
What Should an Organization Look For in an Orchestration Solution?
Key selection criteria:
Integration with Existing Solutions: The solution should integrate cleanly with your current on‑premises and cloud systems, applications, and IDPs.
Scalability: It must scale with the number of users, applications, and environments as your organization grows.
Automation: It should automate provisioning, de‑provisioning, password resets, and other repetitive identity tasks with configurable workflows.
Security: Look for MFA, SSO, adaptive/risk-based access controls, and strong authorization capabilities aligned to your security requirements.
Compliance and Auditing: The solution must log and report on identity and access events in enough detail to satisfy regulatory and internal audit needs.
User Experience: Features like self‑service, intuitive portals, and seamless SSO should reduce friction and help‑desk load.
Vendor Support: Consider the vendor’s track record, support SLAs, documentation quality, and availability of training and partners.
Cost: Evaluate license/subscription fees plus implementation, migration, customization, and ongoing maintenance costs.
The Fabric of Identity Orchestration
Related architectural concepts:
Identity Fabrics: A holistic identity services layer that spans the organization, regardless of location or underlying technology. Identity orchestration is the operational layer that automates identity tasks, while the identity fabric is the architectural framework that makes consistent services available everywhere.
Zero‑Trust Architecture: A “never trust, always verify” security model that requires verifying every access request, internal or external. Identity orchestration plus an identity fabric help implement zero trust by enforcing strong identity verification and contextual access control for every request.
Maintain the Strongest Authentication Security with 1Kosmos
With 1Kosmos, you get:
Identity-Based Authentication: Biometrics and identity proofing identify individuals, not devices, through credential triangulation and verified identity attributes.
Cloud-Native Architecture: A flexible, scalable cloud platform accessible via standard APIs and SDKs.
Identity Proofing: High-assurance digital identity verification anywhere, anytime, and on any device with over 99% accuracy.
