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Authorization and Access Control are critical components of any enterprise architecture that revolves around sensitive information. Selecting the right vendor for an Authorization solution is essential to ensure not only the security of your system, but also the seamless access to data and important information.  

Vendor Evaluation

When evaluating authorization providers, it is essential to assess their capabilities in several key areas. Do they have a platform approach, specific to access control life cycle management? Are authorization controls using a policy-based approach? Explore whether or not the policy design is capable of incorporating contextually aware signals such as risk, threat, device, and location data. Also note the enforcement options, from inline proxies to micro-service based decision engines to APIs and SDKs. And finally, the ability to automate deployment, as well as the creation and management of policies should be considered.

Questions to Consider During Vendor Evaluation

Once the vendor’s capabilities have been identified, the following questions can help guide your discussion for further evaluation.

Platform Approach: 

• Does the solution offer a wide range of authorization capabilities? 
• Is there a centralized management console accessible to various stakeholders?
• Can the platform be extended and customized?
• Are standards-based integration options supported?
• Does it align with modern security architectures?

Policy Management: 

• Can access control logic be encapsulated in policies? 
• Can policies be labeled, version-controlled, and assigned to an owner? 
• Are programmatically created policies and migration of existing access control data supported?

Selecting an Authorization solution vendor requires a comprehensive understanding of capabilities, integrations, security, compliance, scalability and expertise of the landscape.  Careful evaluation of these factors will help you make an informed decision to ensure the security of your enterprise, and help you reap the benefits that the value of Authorization has to offer to your business. 

To read more suggestions related to vendor evaluation, as well as a broader guide for getting started with authorization, check out our complete Authorization Buyer’s Guide.