Enforce Governance and meet Compliance for a zero-trust, least-privilege security posture
Cyber threats are outpacing on-premises protection. Hybrid workforces require access from multiple time zones, devices, and networks. The traditional identity solution is not agile enough to handle these demands, resulting in breaches, increased operational costs, and runaway IT expenses. Identity as a Service (IDaaS) revolutionizes how companies use identity and access management by moving it into the cloud.
This provides scaling opportunities, constant updates, and user-friendly functionality to modern businesses. Over the past five years, IDaaS adoption has grown rapidly, but costs aren’t the only reason for adoption. This blog discusses what identity as a service offers, what limitations traditional IAM has, and how RoboMQ’s Hire2Retire can help an organization implement enterprise IDaaS from start to finish.
Identity as a Service delivers identity and access management through a centralized cloud platform. Companies can use it to leverage identity capabilities, such as provisioning, authentication, authorization, and accessing governance in one central place instead of managing them on their local infrastructure. At its foundation, Identity as a Service consists of three primary capabilities:
Here is a quick look at how Identity as a Service works end to end, from a user requesting access to the system verifying and granting it securely.
Managing the workforce lifecycle with outdated manual processes is expensive, lengthy, and creates a security risk. Hire2Retire removes these issues. It connects your HR system (Workday, ADP, SAP SuccessFactors, UKG, etc.) directly to AD, Entra ID, Okta, or Google Workspace. Once an employee record is created by HR (i.e., New Hire, Role Change, Termination), Hire2Retire acts.
New accounts are created, licenses are assigned, and role-based access (RBAC) is provisioned. All of this before the employee’s first workday. If an employee leaves the organization, access is revoked instantly across every connected system. There are no tickets, no delays, and no orphan accounts. The result is a better first-day experience for employees, a 40-60% reduction in IT workload, and strong zero-trust, least-privilege security throughout the employee lifecycle.
The limitations of legacy IAM systems are evident in your IT backlog, audit findings, and incident reports. As organizations mature and adopt hybrid delivery models, the complexity of managing on-premises identity infrastructures increases.
On-premises IAM has a significant maintenance burden because it requires dedicated hardware, patches, and a specialized team to support the operations of your IAM system. For example, with every security patch or fix, you will need to deploy changes.
Your legacy IAM system is rigid and has limited scalability. To add a new application, office, or group of new users, you must perform a comprehensive capacity analysis. If your company is a cloud-first organization, you must be able to provide access to users quickly.
It’s possible to deploy SaaS identity management in days, whereas traditional IAM systems take months for the same. Your legacy IAM system was designed for users solely on the organization’s network. This scenario is changing due to the rise of remote work and the SaaS industry. The transition to identity as a service is not a technology trend, but it is driven by operational failure of legacy IAM systems.
Here are the key reasons drive enterprises to adopt identity as a service:
Identity is now the “perimeter” or first level of security. IDaaS uses multi-factor authentication, zero trust principles, and least-privileged access by default. The threat response capabilities are automated based on updated information. For enterprises using zero trust identity controls, it prevents attackers from moving across systems; something traditional security cannot stop.
Enterprises grow through hiring, acquisitions, and new market expansion. Identity as a service is scalable on a demand basis. Adding 10,000 users or 50 new applications does not require any changes to infrastructure. An organization with a global footprint can have the same policies and controls in all regions without replicating its servers.
Traditional IAM is expensive to implement, as it requires capital expenditures associated with hardware, software licenses, and engineering time. Identity as a service changes that to a subscription model–OpEx versus CapEx. So, the IT staff can use the resources dedicated to maintaining the infrastructure for more value-added work.
A distributed workforce accesses corporate resources using personal devices, home networks, and public Wi-Fi. Identity as a service assures that whenever a user accesses the network, regardless of the user’s location, the same security policies are enforced. Simultaneously, conditional access (if-then) rules and device health checks are executed transparently for users, keeping the security teams in control.
By using identity as a service solutions, organizations can have their services set up within a few days. They can receive automatic upgrades or new functionality without having to do any maintenance themselves (the vendor takes care of this).
Users often create “shadow” IT because they forget their passwords, leading to poor credential practices. With single sign-on (SSO), users only remember one password to connect to all authorized systems. Also, there’s no need to create separate credentials for each authorized system. This significantly reduces help desk requests related to forgotten passwords.
GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2, and ISO 27001 all need demonstrable control over who accesses what data, when, and why. IDaaS centralizes audit log management, automates access review workflows, and produces on-demand compliance reports, eliminating the manual effort required to collect evidence throughout an audit cycle.
This comparison highlights the key differences between traditional IAM and cloud-based IDaaS in terms of speed, scalability, cost, and security. It clearly shows why enterprises are shifting to a more flexible and efficient cloud model.
| Feature | Traditional IAM | IDaaS (Cloud IAM) |
|---|---|---|
| Deployment Time | Months | Days |
| Scalability | Limited, hardware-bound | Elastic, on demand |
| Cost Model | CapEx (hardware + licenses) | Subscription (OpEx) |
| Security Updates | Manual, scheduled cycles | Automated, continuous |
| Remote Access | Limited, VPN-dependent | Seamless, policy-enforced |
| Compliance Reporting | Manual, fragmented | Centralized, automated |
Businesses see useful impacts of identity as a service beyond daily security management. Some examples:
A logistics company acquires a smaller company. The company now must give 4,000 new employees access to the company’s systems, and the IT department must create tickets for each access request. After 3 weeks, hundreds of 4,000 employees still don’t have access to the company’s systems. An employee who left the logistics company still has access to the company’s financial systems 46 days later.
Here, there is one compliance violation and one security gap, both of which could have been avoided. With identity as a service connected to the HR system, new employees would have received access on Day 1, and access for exiting employees would have been removed immediately without manual follow-up.
Identity will continue to evolve as automation, AI, and real-time access controls reshape how enterprises manage security. As identity as a service becomes the foundation of modern access management, enterprises need identity systems that can scale with their business and remove manual efforts. RoboMQ’s Hire2Retire helps automate identity across the entire employee lifecycle, ensuring access is always accurate and secure.
Want to see how RoboMQ’s Hire2Retire can help your enterprise in the future? Check out our website or set up a demo to see what Hire2Retire can do and how it can really make a difference for your organization!
Healthcare, finance, and tech organizations have the biggest advantages of utilizing IDaaS, as they have compliance requirements (HIPAA, PCI-DSS, SOC 2), remote employees, and a high amount of sensitive data. Any company that has hundreds of employees working across multiple applications will see an ROI once they utilize IDaaS.
IDaaS creates a unique identifier for all nonemployees (contractors, partners, vendors) using federated identity and time-based access policies. Once the project is completed, access reverts automatically without the IT department’s assistance.
Hire2Retire is crucial in identity management due to its ability to provide a uniform approach to managing user access for employees throughout their entire employee lifecycle. H2R ensures that organizations grant employees appropriate access upon joining and revoke access upon departure, thereby reducing security risks and enhancing compliance.
Absolutely! Most identity-as-a-service platforms use standard protocols (e.g., LDAP, SAML, API), allowing for easy integration with existing systems without replacing any current system completely.
Basic deployments (SSO, MFA, and core directory integration) go live in days to two weeks. A full deployment takes several weeks based on the number of integrated products and the complexity of the organization.
