An Introduction to Workload Identity and Access Management

In recent months we have explored how the concept of identity and access management (IAM) extends far beyond the confines of human users. 

As organizations increasingly adopt cloud computing, microservices, and containerization, the need to manage and secure the identities and access rights of workloads—such as applications, services, and processes—becomes paramount. This practice is known as Workload Identity and Access Management (WIAM).

WIAM provides access management based on identity, connecting machine identities with service accounts. By utilizing machine identity principles, WIAM verifies workloads and enforces dynamic access controls through policies, while also handling credentials to eliminate any concealed information in your environment.

The Evolution of Identity Management

Traditionally, IAM focused on managing the access and privileges of human users within an organization. Employees, contractors, and partners were given access to systems and data based on their roles. However, with the rise of cloud-native environments, workloads now often operate autonomously, accessing resources, communicating with other services, and performing actions without direct human intervention.

These workloads require their own identities and permissions to function securely and efficiently. WIAM addresses this need by extending the principles of IAM to these non-human entities, ensuring that every application, service, and process operates under strict access controls and follows the principle of least privilege.

This is why there is a growing trend to explore the solutions around Non-Human Identity Management as well as Workload Identity and Access Management (WIAM).  

Benefits of WIAM

WIAM offers numerous advantages, such as restricting access to prevent security breaches. In the event of one service being compromised, attackers are unable to effortlessly access other resources. Additionally, Workload IAM guarantees that services in the cloud environment receive the necessary access efficiently, without encountering unnecessary delays or complications.

A leading cloud computing based data cloud company had developed a mature process for handling access between workloads, however this created a strain on resources and potential security risks. Upon using a modern WIAM system they were proactively able to improve their environment in a number of ways:

• Automate credentials issuance, just-in-time.
• Go secretless. (The WIAM can issue short lived credentials instead of long-lived keys.)
• Enable zero trust conditional access.
• Provide a highly automated, compliant system of record. 

Sateesh Hegde, Head of Growth, NetAnalytiks explains why WIAM is gaining importance within organizations. These include:

1. Increased cloud adoption
2. Microservices architecture
3. Automated and scalable security
4. Alignment with the Zero Trust security model
5. Mitigating potential insider threats
6. Clear audit trails for compliance and regulatory requirements:
7. The complexity and size of modern IT environments
8. Permits a Rapid Response to Threats

Understanding Workload Identities

A workload identity is a unique digital identity assigned to a workload, enabling it to authenticate and authorize its actions. These identities can be attributed to various entities, including:

• Applications: Software applications running on servers or in the cloud.
• Services: Microservices that interact with each other within a distributed architecture.
• Containers: Lightweight, portable, and self-sufficient units that run applications.
• Functions: Serverless computing functions that execute code in response to events.

Each of these entities requires access to resources such as databases, APIs, storage services, and other applications. By assigning unique identities to workloads, organizations can control and monitor their access, enhancing security and compliance.

Microsoft sums up the situation regarding different terminology in the industry and provide a good working example: "The terminology is inconsistent across the industry, but generally a workload identity is something you need for your software entity to authenticate with some system. For example, in order for GitHub Actions to access Azure subscriptions the action needs a workload identity which has access to those subscriptions."