What is Federated Access?

Federated Access, also known as federated identity management, enables users to log into multiple systems, applications, or networks with a single digital identity. It establishes trust relationships between different organizations or domains, using an identity provider (IdP) to authenticate the user once, and then sharing privileges and entitlement/rights (attributes) across network and system boundaries.

Federated Access Management and Access Control in Cybersecurity

Federated access is a tool that falls underneath the wider umbrella of Identity and Access Management (IAM). It can help businesses better operationalize and manage a streamlined login experience for employees and third parties. Federated access also supports governance initiatives within IAM, enabling teams to better enforce security policies and credential best practices across varied domains and systems.

Why Does Federated Access Matter?

Federated access exists to solve the problem of managing multiple usernames and passwords in a distributed environment. As organizations and businesses grow larger and more diversified, users increasingly need to access resources that are spread over multiple systems, environments, and networks. By implementing federated access, organizations can make this process much easier and more secure for their users, as it eliminates the need for users to remember multiple sets of credentials for distributed authentication and reduces the risk of password fatigue.

Who Uses Federated Access?

The primary users of federated access are large organizations and businesses, particularly those that operate over distributed networks or have multiple, independent subsystems. This includes enterprises that utilize cloud infrastructure, traditional on-premises compute, and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions, as well as organizations that rely heavily on third-party vendors or partners. IT departments within these organizations typically implement federated access to streamline user authentication and improve security measures as workloads and users traverse these environments.

Federated access leverages various protocols to securely pass authentication and authorization between systems. On the front end, this connectivity allows users to simply log in with their credentials once, typically with multifactor authentication (MFA), and then access multiple systems within the same session. Behind the scenes, federated access first confirms that a user is who they say they are and passes this information to the system that the user is trying to access (federated authentication). It then grants the appropriate level of access rights, entitlements, privileges, and permissions for each system that the user connects to (federated authorization).

This process is facilitated via token exchange: the process of exchanging a security token from the user’s original identity provider (IdP) for a new, scoped token that can be used by the target system, application, network, resource, etc.

Common Federated Access Protocols

Common protocols used for federated access include:

• Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML), which uses a standardized process to authenticate a user once, and then communicates successful authentication to various systems, applications, networks, resources, etc.

• Open Authorization (OAuth), which authorizes various applications and services to interact with your existing account on a different application / service, without exposing your credentials for new authentications. This is typically performed using short-lived tokens.

• OpenID Connect (OIDC), which is an authentication protocol that layers on top of OAuth’s authorization framework to verify who a user is and provide a high degree of identity confidence.

Federated Access, Federated Identity, and Identity Federation

Federated access, federated identity, and identity federation are three terms used to define different components of federated access and while similar, are distinctly different concepts.

• Federated access refers to the general process of authenticating one digital identity to other systems and domains.

• Federated identity refers to the digital identity that is used to verify who the user is throughout this process.

• Identity federation refers to the architecture used to facilitate all the authentication and authorization steps within the federated access process.

Single Sign-On (SSO) is a mechanism that allows employees to sign in once and then access multiple applications that are provisioned to them within their own organization. This architecture provides a single workflow or pipeline for application access for all users to gain access to a resource. Federated access, on the other hand, allows employees to use their credentials to access systems across various third-party services, but doesn’t influence a strict workflow for resource authentication.

Federated access offers a number of benefits, including:

• Streamlined login process: By only requiring that users log in with one set of credentials, organizations can mitigate human errors related to creating and using credentials (e.g., creating weak passwords because there are so many to remember, repeating passwords across multiple accounts, etc.).

• More consistent security policies: When users leverage a single set of credentials for all interconnected systems, applications, and networks, organizations can better enforce security policies, such as MFA, for a broad range of resource access requirements.

• Centralized account management: Federated access makes it easier for administrators to provision / deprovision all accounts associated with a particular employee or vendor, minimizing the chance of orphaned accounts if a user leaves or no longer needs an account within a particular system. This centralized management also helps organizations consistently enforce permission management strategies such as least privilege, which a user is granted the minimum levels of access or permissions needed to perform their job functions.

While federated access can help mitigate many risks, it can introduce new risk if the identity provider that facilitates the federated access is compromised and additional safeguards are not in place. For instance, identity infrastructure, such as a federated identity management provider, could be misconfigured in such a way that an attacker could authenticate to systems from outside of trusted locations or managed systems, since the workflow for authentication is not enforced, as with SSO. Once inside, the attacker could leverage the infrastructure to move laterally between connected systems, and / or to escalate privileges. This is why it’s important to implement additional security controls—beyond federated access—that protect identity infrastructure from compromise and misuse.

Best Practices for Secure Federated Access

Some best practices that support the security of federated access include:

• Finding and protecting every privileged pathway in your environment: Federated access can become an indirect route to escalate privileges, if compromised by an attacker. It’s important to understand exactly how this process of privilege escalation could happen across domains, in the case of a compromise, and take proactive action to protect against it.

• Enforcing just-in-time (JIT) access across the environment: In a JIT mode, systems are only available for login exactly when they are needed. Removing standing access (and standing privileges) to systems and domains that are interconnected by a federated identity management provider can drastically reduce the window of opportunity for attacks.

• Monitoring every privileged session: This provides essential oversight, helping ensure that if an employee or third party logs into a sensitive system via federated access, they are only performing legitimate tasks throughout their session. This requires securing workflows and pathways for trusted privileged sessions.

Federated access is commonplace in large organizations and is becoming increasingly popular as businesses continue to transition to cloud-based services. It's seen as an essential component of a modern, robust cybersecurity strategy, and its adoption can be seen in various industries including healthcare, finance, education, and many more.

Learn more about how BeyondTrust Entitle can help your organization manage cloud entitlements with granular, just-in-time provisioning, built into your existing federated access workflows within Okta, Entra ID, and more.