Mastering Identity Security: A Primer on FICAM Best Practices

For federal and state governments and agencies, identity is key to implementing strong security. With millions of individuals disclosing confidential personal data to commercial and public entities every day, government agencies must maintain stringent security measures to protect their assets.

The need for robust security, highlighted by Executive Order 14028 issued in May 2021, calls for strengthening the nation’s cybersecurity posture. The Executive Order emphasizes the importance of protecting digital assets and mitigating cyber threats by emphasizing the modernization of identity and access management (IAM) systems. At the same time, the Federal Identity, Credential, and Access Management (FICAM) program has played a pivotal role in shaping the government’s approach to protecting identity and access.

This article explores these principles in more detail, explains the benefits of deploying a FICAM system, and provides insight into best practices for implementation.

FICAM Definition

Federal Identity, Credential, and Access Management (ICAM) is a comprehensive security protocol framework designed to help federal organizations manage, monitor, and secure access to resources. FICAM protects organizations from unauthorized access attempts by ensuring that only authorized individuals can access authorized resources for legitimate reasons.

FICAM (Federal Identity, Credential, Access Management) is an extension of the ICAM protocols, methodologies, and systems for federal agencies. It allows you to regulate access to secure resources such as files, networks, servers, and physical locations.

FICAM’s core principles

ICAM security is built on three fundamental pillars: Identity, Credentials, and Access. The following sections outline each concept and show how FICAM implements them.

identity management

Identity refers to the set of attributes that define an individual. At the federal level, this typically includes personal or biometric information collected by the agency. Identity management is the coordination of policies that enable organizations to establish, maintain, and delete user identities that are critical to verifying identities, managing user accounts, and maintaining accurate account records.

A core part of identity management is governance, which guides ICAM functions and activities, including analytics to identify security risks and regulatory violations.

Credential Management Credentials essentially prove a person’s identity. Credential management allows organizations to issue, monitor, renew, and revoke access credentials by associating identities with specific logic essential for account registration, information maintenance, and resource issuance.

access management

Access management ensures that only authorized individuals can access or perform specific actions on resources. Access management entities also include the operational components of a federation that enable organizations to accept identities, properties, and credentials issued by others. This improves interoperability and facilitates intelligent access decisions. It plays a pivotal role in defining access policies and rules, determining permissions, and authenticating and authorizing users.

FICAM’s goals

FICAM outlines five strategic goals aimed at improving the security and efficiency of government technology experiences: These goals are also designed to promote compliance with federal law, streamline access to digital government services, enhance security, and create a trustworthy, interoperable, and cost-effective environment.

FICAM architecture

The ICAM Segment Architecture describes how an organization identifies, authenticates, and authorizes individuals in various segments to ensure trustworthy,

Interoperable access to resources. This helps improve your security posture and efficiency, reduces the risk of identity theft and data breaches, and strengthens the protection of your personally identifiable information (PII).

At its core, FICAM is a comprehensive framework for organizations focused on the areas of enterprise identity practices, policies, and information security. It provides a common framework for IT systems, apps and networks and informs readers of the standards and policies that form FICAM.

Several federal laws, policies, and standards that form the basis for the design of the FICAM program apply, including OMB Circular A-108, OMB 19-17, Executive Order 13883, and NIST SP 800-63-3. A full list of standards can be found here.

IBM technology can be leveraged to facilitate FICAM deployment by implementing the provided architecture samples.

The figure provided is a reference architecture to highlight the parts needed to implement FICAM. We recommend a single policy enforcement and decision point to ensure consistency and standardization of access decisions. You can then strengthen your security decisions by leveraging OOTB components from your provider or integrating with existing solutions that exist within your institution. These components can augment your FICAM architecture by providing features such as multi-factor authentication, endpoint device analytics, and threat feeds from SIEM tools.

Getting started with ICAM and FICAM

To ensure compliance with policies and standards and successfully implement ICAM, consider the following guidelines:

Avoid vendor lock-in

Choose a vendor like IBM Security verify SaaS, whose solutions are based on open standards and can integrate with numerous partners, enabling interoperability with broad integrations for powerful identity and access management.

Implementing multi-factor authentication

Multi-factor authentication mitigates the risk of access breaches and increases confidence in each user’s identity. Strengthen your security posture by implementing anti-phishing methods, such as authentication products such as Passkey and Verification SaaS from the FIDO Alliance.

Adaptive Access Integration

Adaptive Access combined with threat intelligence feeds provides strong defense against authentication attacks. This integration enhances contextual analysis around user logins and recommends informed access decisions based on calculated risk scores.

When evaluating “adaptive” providers, take note of the quality of recommendations generated by the system. Collecting “static” context such as user agent type, geographic location, IP address risk, etc. is not enough. We recommend extending the context by evaluating biometric context such as typing speed, mouse movements, etc. Most vendors provide static context, but few provide the ability to detect biometric changes or detect VM virtual machine presence on an endpoint.

Enable end-to-end attribute-based access control

This access control model sets access permissions based on attributes, allowing administrators flexibility over access policies and effectively bridging the gaps in security, data privacy, and compliance. We recommend using this in conjunction with a privileged access management tool to further secure your most sensitive credentials.

Secure access to APIs

To enhance interoperability, deploy ICAM functional open standards such as OAuth2. We recommend that you implement API access management to secure these resources and enforce authentication.

By following these guidelines and leveraging IBM Security verify SaaS, organizations can strengthen their security posture, maintain regulatory compliance, and effectively protect sensitive information.

Advantages of FICAM

Implementing FICAM will help federal agencies address key security concerns. It provides a standardized framework that mitigates the risk of identity theft and data breaches, promotes compliance, and strengthens security by connecting federal agencies through federation and PIV credential compatibility.

Take advantage of IBM Security Verification

Leveraging IBM’s identity and access management technology is critical to any government or federal agency implementing a Federal Identity, Credential, and Access Management (FICAM) program. IBM’s solutions are carefully designed to integrate seamlessly with existing infrastructure, allowing organizations to increase security without requiring major modifications to current systems. This interoperability is critical because it allows security measures to be strengthened without disruption, especially in government environments where a variety of legacy systems are often operated. Additionally, IBM’s technology is adept at supporting modern protocols such as OAuth and FIDO2, helping organizations maintain secure, user-friendly access and maintain the integrity and confidentiality of data across a diverse and evolving digital environment.

IBM’s solutions also offer extensive support for legacy environments, a valuable feature for organizations that still rely on older technologies. This allows organizations to continue to use existing systems while benefiting from advanced security and compliance features, enabling a balanced and adaptable approach to security. Additionally, the comprehensive support for Personal Identity Verification (PIV) and Common Access Card (CAC) credentials provided by IBM technology is critical in the federal space. It promotes secure and reliable access to sensitive information and systems and provides agencies with careful control over access, protecting against unauthorized access and potential security breaches.

In essence, IBM’s identity and access management technology provides a multifaceted and adaptable approach to security. It allows government agencies to strengthen their security posture, protect sensitive assets, comply with evolving security standards, and maintain operational efficiency and user friendliness within the diverse technology environment of government operations.

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