How to Streamline Cloud Video Surveillance Access With Identity Management

As organizations increasingly rely on cloud video surveillance to protect people, property, and assets, the challenge of managing secure, remote access across teams and locations becomes paramount. Security leaders and IT professionals are expected to maintain not only secure surveillance infrastructure, but also airtight controls over who has access to video, and the degree of that access. By integrating with identity management solutions, cloud video surveillance operators can ensure that the same user access policies and rules applied across their organizations also apply to their video surveillance system. 

This article explores why identity management matters in the context of cloud video surveillance, the dangers of failing to integrate these systems, and how integrating identity management can transform operational efficiency, security, and user experience. 

What Happens When Surveillance and Identity Management Aren’t Integrated 

Identity management, a now vital measure of business network security, is the means by which user access and account data is managed in a centralized system. It ensures that only authorized personnel can access specific systems and information through rigid account access controls. 

As user-created gaps are often cited as the most vulnerable areas of organizational cybersecurity, hackers have increasingly turned to leveraging user accounts to gain illegitimate access to larger networks. Adam Meyers, head of intelligence at CrowdStrike, said that, “80% of attacks involved identity and compromised credentials.” The CyberArk 2024 Identity Security Threat Landscape Report states that over 90% of organizations had two or more identity-related breaches during the year. On December 30, 2024, the United States Treasury was hacked due to a weakness spotted by hackers in third-party software, highlighting the need for stringent controls and monitoring of privileged user activity. 

Compliance mandates, such as HIPAA and CFIUS, are also key to take into consideration, as these regulations often require identity management systems in place to prevent cyberattacks. If businesses neglect using identity management to stay compliant with these regulations, it could put them at a certain level of risk. 

Given this backdrop of increasingly complex threats and tougher compliance mandates, the need to integrate identity management with video surveillance has never been greater. As video security has become an increasing target for hackers, it’s vital to ensure your system is protected. The next sections will look at the key challenges organizations face when surveillance and identity management aren’t integrated. 

Labor-Intensive System Management 

A frequent pain point for IT teams is the labor required to manage user access across disparate security platforms lacking integrated identity management. To apply consistent policies, administrators must often access each surveillance system on-site to manually update permissions, reset passwords, and manage user lists. 

This tedious work diverts resources from more pressing tasks and leads to reduced efficiency when onboarding or offboarding staff. Without centralized identity management, this labor burden becomes increasingly difficult to manage and can cause unintentional gaps in the network as important cybersecurity monitoring falls to the side. 

Weak Network Security 

Identity management is one of the first lines of defense against unauthorized access and cyberattacks. Without it, organizational accounts and sensitive data are exposed. So, if your organization applies strong user access policies across the majority of its systems but doesn’t extend those same controls to video surveillance, you leave a critical asset unprotected. 

Video data often captures not just operational workflows, but also information on employees, customers, and students that’s meant to be protected. Inadequate identity management makes this data an easy target for hackers seeking ransom, sabotage, or theft. Because of this, integrated identity management in surveillance is an absolute necessity. 

Poor User Experience Navigating Platforms 

Finally, without identity management, many users have to remember multiple passwords across the various platforms and systems they use every day. This not only provides a poor user experience, as your teams will have to log into each platform individually with different credentials, but it also causes password fatigue. This can create further negligence in your team members, as they’ll be less inclined to use strong passwords in favor of using the same credentials for convenience. This, in turn, introduces massive security risks. 

By not integrating with an identity management solution, organizations will not only be at higher risk of cyberattacks, but there will also be a drastic reduction in the efficiency of their operations, creating a clunky user experience that can lead to further security issues. 

How Identity Management Ensures Secure, Easy Video Access 

Identity management helps alleviate the issues discussed above, providing easy to use surveillance for team members while reducing the overall burden on IT to manage the system. Integrating your cloud video solution with identity management can be accomplished flexibly and easily scaled across your locations thanks to the cloud, enabling faster rollout of your cybersecurity solution. Additionally, by minimizing management, enforcing security policies, and enhancing user experience, your team will be able to simultaneously lower costs associated with labor and risk, making this a worthwhile investment. 

Below, we’ll analyze how identity management can streamline management of your system, help you build a stronger network, and provide a better user experience for your entire team. 

Minimize Management and Reduce IT Burden 

Centralized user management in a cloud video platform working alongside an identity management solution reduces the overall IT labor associated with system and user management, freeing your IT department to work on more pressing tasks throughout your organization. This is accomplished through several key features: 

• Integration with Identity Management Solutions: An open platform ensures that you can work with the identity management solution that supports the rest of your organization, providing peace of mind knowing your video security is not left out.  
• User Management: User management enables businesses to instantly apply permission changes to users and recorders thanks to the cloud. This lessens burden on IT as they won’t have to travel to different systems to manually change user permissions. 
• Role-based Access Control (RBAC): RBAC helps streamline the process of assigning permissions based on level of access for an individual or group with your organization. Instead of a single level of access, each user or user group will only be able to use what you have configured for them. 
• Lost Password Resets: Lost password resets empower users to create new passwords in the event they’ve forgotten their previous one, reducing IT workload and mitigating the likelihood of shared user credentials. 

As your business grows, solutions can also be easily scaled as new locations, users, and devices are added, ensuring your organization maintains account security across its various accounts while keeping IT workload manageable. 

Enforce Security Policies for a Stronger Network 

Identity management and centralized management in the cloud help strengthen overall network security with easily enforceable policies automatically pushed across accounts thanks to centralized management in the cloud. This includes the use of multi-factor authentication (MFA), a cybersecurity best practice which requires a user to provide two or more distinct forms of verification to gain access to their account. By doing so, MFA ensures that unauthorized parties are unable to easily gain access to user accounts. 

However, while many larger organizations have MFA in place, being required to do so by regulatory requirements including HIPAA and GDPR, nearly 70% of small-to-medium businesses do not use MFA. This puts these businesses at enormous risk, as discussed above, but luckily, MFA in a solution can be easily deployed across user accounts thanks to the cloud. 

Relying on a username and password alone presents a clear vulnerability in system security, making it essential to leverage MFA to protect your accounts. By doing so, your network will be more fortified against hackers trying to gain access to your surveillance. 

Enhance User Experience and Streamline Processes 

Cloud management not only benefits IT teams; it also impacts the workflow of anyone interacting with your video surveillance by providing a more convenient platform designed for ease-of-use while still safeguarding user data. 

This is accomplished with single-sign on (SSO), which allows users to leverage the same set of credentials across platforms. SSO provides a secure method for accessing user accounts while simultaneously limiting the account fatigue associated with managing numerous complex passwords. Alternatively, while SSO enables remote access across clients, IT teams can limit access for certain users or groups thanks to IP address controls or access for specific clients through a secure cloud platform. 

With management in the cloud, both your IT department and team members across your organization can enjoy remote, easy access to their system that remains secure and minimizes risk. 

Ensure the Same User Access Rules are Applied to Your Video Security 

Having your surveillance integrated with your identity management solution is a vital method for ensuring your video is protected. As video is a treasure trove of data, valuable not just to your organization but also to hackers, it’s critical to ensure your system is secure, easy to use, and easier to manage.  

OpenEye Web Services (OWS) integrates with leading identity management solutions, including Okta, Entra ID, SAML, and ADFS. Businesses can seamlessly incorporate the OWS cloud video platform into their organization without compromising their network security.  OpenEye’s cloud management also reduces the burden in deploying and managing security thanks to centralized cloud access, role-based user groups, and SSO. ISO 27001:2022 and SOC 2 certified, OpenEye’s trusted platform features cybersecurity best practices, such as MFA, to ensure your video data is protected. 

To learn more about OpenEye’s cyber-secure solution, book an OWS demo today.