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DevOps has taken the IT world by storm over the last several years. Consequently, a recent study on cloud trends discovered 86% of IT leaders see DevOps as part of their IT strategy moving forward. As more organizations shift to being driven by their IT systems and software, DevOps as a methodology and the personnel that implement the methodology are critical to business success. Another key part of that success is driven by identity management in DevOps.
So, let’s briefly examine what DevOps is, and why identity management in DevOps is crucial for success.
What is DevOps?
DevOps is all about taking Agile methodologies and leveraging them across the entire organization, but primarily through operations. As more businesses leverage IT systems to deliver their solutions to market, the rapid, iterative nature of DevOps is what is helping businesses move faster.
While DevOps is about process and people, there is an aspect that is about technology and solutions. A critical piece of DevOps solutions is controlling access through the development pipeline. Of course, different types of personnel need differing levels of access. Developers may need access to a different set of systems than the QA team or the operations group. Add in security and other related groups, and it’s easy to see how controlling access can get complicated quick. There is a temptation to just give everybody access to everything. However, this approach can greatly decrease security, and make it difficult to meet compliance regulations.
As a result, considering identity management in DevOps is critical for IT admins and DevOps engineers. So now, let’s take a look at why identity management has been a challenge for DevOps organizations.
Challenges with Identity Management in DevOps
In the past, identity management in general consisted of Microsoft® Active Directory® on-prem managing a prevailing Windows® environment. Fast forward to today, and most DevOps organizations utilize infrastructure that’s in the cloud and data centers that are in AWS®. Active Directory just wasn’t built to connect with non-Microsoft, cloud-based resources, so IT admins haven’t been able to turn to this IAM platform to manage their DevOps resources. Configuration management tools were an option, and they were quite popular in the DevOps community. However, configuration management tools struggled with identity management due to how much code needed to be written and their lack of security.
Fortunately, there’s a new generation of identity management in DevOps, and it is called JumpCloud® Directory-as-a-Service®. This modern cloud identity management solution seamlessly manages access to Linux® and Windows servers regardless of location and also includes features such as cloud LDAP, hosted RADIUS, and system management.
For DevOps admins considering how to manage their identity and access control issues, JumpCloud Directory-as-a-Service might be the right answer.
DevOps Identity Management with a Cloud Identity Provider
This hosted identity provider takes an independent approach that enables JumpCloud to connect to any resource no matter where it is, who is providing it, what kind of platform it’s on, and what kind of protocol it utilizes. With this directory service method, IT admins can have identity management in DevOps adapt to their environment instead of trying to fit their environment with the identity provider.
Also, JumpCloud’s centralized identity management boosts security and assists with regulatory compliance with features like SSH key management, MFA, Policies, and Password Complexity Management.
Finally, DevOps engineers gain back valuable time because one identity is used to access everything. From systems, servers, and networks to on-prem and web-based applications and file storage, they only need One Identity to Rule Them All®.
Learn More about Identity Management in DevOps with JumpCloud
Interested in learning more about how JumpCloud can help you with identity management in DevOps? Consider watching the webinar above. Tamr discusses how JumpCloud has helped them centralize user access to hundreds of virtual servers and other IT resources. If you would prefer to talk to somebody, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We’d be happy to answer any questions you might have. Lastly, you are more than welcome to start evaluating JumpCloud’s cloud identity management solution by signing up for a free account. You don’t even need a credit card, you will have full access to the whole platform, and your first ten users are free forever.
