Security News > 2021 > October > Microsoft bought CloudKnox because hybrid multicloud identity is complicated
"We're using more and more cloud services and SaaS applications, we're more interconnected and we're spending more time online, we have more multicloud environments and at the same time the cyberattacks and crimes are ever increasing," CVP of Microsoft's Identity division Joy Chik told TechRepublic.
With many different identities, resources, applications and data sets to secure, organizations are looking for a unified way to manage access control as a first line of defense, using identity as the control plane.
A more unified control plane for identity would cover multiple clouds and services, and allow organizations to implement the same zero trust approach they're already adopting for human identities.
"We're already starting to provide non-human identity entitlement management for some of the Azure workload and CloudKnox goes beyond just the Microsoft cloud."
"CloudKnox is very much aligned to our roadmap but in terms of extending what they already have." Part of that will be extending the product to cover on-premises identities, even through Microsoft solutions or by providing APIs to partners to integrate with CloudKnox.
"You have to look at the end-to-end lifecycle: not just looking at the API from the API point of view, but what is that identity, human or non-human, trying to accomplish? How do you follow the lifecycle of that identity in terms of what action it's trying to accomplish, what environment it traverses and when does it need access at what level of privilege, and when does that end and then rinse and repeat."