Strong, device-bound, phishing-resistant authentication is the bedrock of modern security. But true, dynamic security doesn't stop there. To make the smartest access decisions, you need to consider not just who is authenticating, but also the security posture of the device they're using. Beyond Identity gathers crucial device health signals directly from our authenticator client – information like OS version, disk encryption status, and whether device-level biometrics are enabled. This gives you immediate, foundational visibility into the device's trustworthiness.

This capability is then significantly amplified when you integrate additional real-time signals from your existing security ecosystem. By pulling data from your EDR, MDM, or ZTNA solutions directly into our policy engine, you layer even more critical device health and compliance checks onto our strong authentication and first-party device insights. This comprehensive approach, combining Beyond Identity's native device posture assessment with enriched intelligence from your other security tools, ensures only trusted users on demonstrably trusted devices gain access.

This post outlines the value these integrations bring to augment our native device security checks, how to configure them for optimal performance, create effective policies that leverage this combined intelligence, and monitor their health to maintain a robust security posture.

The Power of Combined Signals

Integrating your EDR, MDM, or ZTNA tools with Beyond Identity moves you beyond simple authentication to context-aware access control. Instead of treating identity and device security as separate silos, you link them directly.

Here are the benefits:

• Real-time Device Verification: 
  
  • Check if the EDR agent (like CrowdStrike Falcon or SentinelOne) is running, so that you can block access from devices lacking critical endpoint protection.
  • Verify if the device is managed by your MDM (like Intune or Jamf), which ensures only corporate-governed devices can access sensitive resources.
  • Confirm if compliance policies are met (e.g., disk encryption enabled, OS up-to-date), preventing access from devices that don't adhere to your organization's security baselines.
• Risk-Based Access: Use risk scores or threat detection signals from your security tools to automatically block access from compromised or high-risk devices.
• Enforce Compliance: Ensure devices meet organizational standards (e.g., OS version, encryption status, security settings enabled) as part of the login flow.
• True Zero Trust: By continuously verifying both the user's identity and the device's security posture against your policies, you implement a core principle of Zero Trust architecture.

Planning Your Integrations Strategy

Adding integrations is straightforward, but requires careful planning:

1. Explore Integrations: Browse the available EDR, MDM, ZTNA, and other integrations directly within the Beyond Identity Admin Console under the "Integrations" section, or on our Website:

2. Follow Documentation: Each integration has specific requirements (API keys, permissions, URLs). Carefully follow the step-by-step instructions provided in our official documentation. You can find general guides and specific vendor instructions here:
   
   • Beyond Identity Integrations Overview
   • Support Portal Integration Guides
   • Secure Access Docs - Integrations
3. Test in Monitor Mode: Always configure your initial policies leveraging a new integration to run in "Monitor" mode. This allows you to observe the policy's behavior and impact in the logs without blocking user access. Verify it works as expected before switching to "Enforcement" mode.

Crafting Smart Access Policies

Once an integration is active, you can use its data attributes within your access policies. For example, you might require a minimum CrowdStrike ZTA score or check that a device is marked as compliant in Microsoft Intune before allowing access.

While security is paramount, we understand the need to maintain productivity. What happens if an integrated service (like your EDR platform) has an outage? For critical applications, we strongly recommend implementing carefully controlled bypass rules within your policy.  For instance, if Beyond Identity cannot fetch the device posture from CrowdStrike, a bypass rule could still allow access provided the user authenticates with their strong, device-bound Beyond Identity credential. This maintains a high level of authentication security while mitigating downtime impact. However, use bypass rules judiciously and understand the temporary risk accepted during the outage.

You can tailor policies for each application using the Secure Access platform. Taking a risk-based approach:

• High-Risk Applications (e.g., financial systems, production databases, admin consoles for critical infrastructure): Apply stricter device checks. Require EDR agent running, up-to-date OS, no detected malware, MDM managed and compliant, and high ZTA scores.
• Lower-Risk Applications (e.g., company intranet, HR portal for viewing pay stubs, non-sensitive document repositories): More lenient checks might be acceptable. Strong Beyond Identity authentication might be sufficient, or perhaps only requiring the device to be MDM managed without stringent compliance checks.

Real-time Integration Monitoring

For your policies to be effective, the underlying integrations need to be healthy and reliably providing data. If Beyond Identity can't communicate with your EDR or MDM, your policy might not evaluate as expected, potentially leading to access failures or unintended bypasses.

To help you maintain clear visibility, we support robust integration monitoring:

• Integration Health Events: When Beyond Identity encounters an issue fetching data from an integrated service (due to API errors, connectivity problems, misconfigurations, etc.), we generate specific events detailing the failure.
• Immediate Visibility: These events appear in the main Activity Log, providing immediate feedback to administrators for troubleshooting:

• SIEM Forwarding: Like other Beyond Identity events, these new integration health logs can be forwarded to your SIEM or security data lake (e.g., Splunk, Microsoft Sentinel, Sumo Logic). This allows you to set up alerts for integration failures, correlate events, and maintain a clear audit trail of when data fetching issues occurred or policies were potentially bypassed. Check our SIEM Integration Guides for configuration details.

Best Practices for Monitoring Integration Health

• During Rollout/Changes: Check integration health logs daily to ensure stability and correct data flow.
• Mature Deployments: For stable integrations, weekly log checks can suffice, but real-time alerting via SIEM is the gold standard.
• Utilize Filters: In the Beyond Identity console, use the available filters to quickly surface relevant logs. Include any event type with “Integration” in your filter.
• Set Up SIEM Alerts: Configure your SIEM to generate immediate alerts for critical integration failure events. This is the most proactive way to identify and address issues.

This improved observability ensures you're quickly aware of any issues impacting your integrated security posture, allowing for faster remediation and consistent policy enforcement.

Conclusion

Integrating your EDR, MDM, and ZTNA tools with Beyond Identity transforms your access control from a simple identity check into a dynamic, risk-aware decision process. By combining strong, phishing-resistant authentication with real-time device posture signals and robust monitoring, you build a more resilient Zero Trust adaptive security foundation, effectively balancing security needs with user productivity.

If you want to learn more about integrations with Beyond Identity, schedule a demo with us today.