By Martin Menzer, Principal Product Strategist, Omada
It’s easy to think of identity as something that only security professionals need to think about, but this siloed approach doesn’t help organizations. In today’s landscape, identity can’t be thought of as lying solely within the purview of your CISO or security team – identity goes beyond being about security to being one about your business’ bottom line.
The traditional network no longer exists – many applications and resources are now cloud hosted, employees are working in the office, at home, on the road, or a hybrid of all the above, in different roles and with different access needs, a company today must look at identity in a more holistic way and implement a strategic approach to identity management.
Looking at today’s landscape
The shifts to largely remote workers and the increased adoption of cloud services have completely changed the game when it comes to where and how employees are accessing corporate resources. Neither trend shows any signs of slowing down. A recent Gartner CFO survey found that 74% of respondents planned to permanently shift employees to remote work after the pandemic subsides. Likewise, IT spending overall continues to shift to public cloud computing. Gartner analysts predict that more than 45% of IT spending on system infrastructure, infrastructure software, application software and business process outsourcing will shift from traditional solutions to cloud by 2024.
It’s little wonder that companies are rapidly adopting cloud services – they are simply and convenient. However, what’s happening all too often is that many companies are adopting these cloud services without taking the time to consider their identity and data governance strategies. Many IT departments are not even aware of the number of SaaS solutions used by the company. This lack of transparency increases risk.
Most of the time, if you ask these companies if they’ve adjusted their governance rules accordingly with cloud services adoption, or if they’ve determined how they’ll deal with identities and the identity life cycle, the standard answer is “not really.” In many cases, these considerations come after the fact – rather than having identity front and center – and that can ultimately harm your company in the long run.
What identity access and governance offers
To create a strong identity governance approach, you need to have basic controls in place and the ability to enforce them using IGA. . You need to be able to quickly react to new requirements and situations with a clear understanding of their impact on your identities.
An identity governance and access solution empowers the IT department to manage and govern all user access rights across a hybrid IT environment. This includes:
- Managing access to resources across both on-premises and cloud services
- Reporting for audit and compliance purposes
- Conducting access reviews and certifications across all cloud and on-premises applications
- Onboarding of new employees and contractors, and off-boarding for those who leave
- Enabling emergency lockouts to disable all users access across on-premises and cloud systems in case of incidents, insider threats, unacceptable risk levels etc.
- Managing access to applications on a granular level in compliance with company policies, handling of access assignment policies and provisioning
- Enforcing corporate security controls and governance rules; in case of violations, the business is involved to mitigate/resolve violations
Identity governance is a competitive differentiator
Identity governance isn’t just about the doom and gloom of cybersecurity threat. Yes, you’re putting your company at risk by not having a strong identity governance approach in place. But there’s a business implication, too; Having a strong approach can truly be a differentiator for your company. That’s because it provides the foundation for your organization’s secure collaboration and efficiency. It also helps protect your brand and reputation from the damages that can result from a data breach.
The full value of IGA
With the continued rise in adoption of the cloud at its services, hybrid IT is necessarily on the rise as well. Driving market forces make this an inevitability. But that means, for regulatory and security reasons, organizations must get control of who has access to which parts of their distributed business systems.
Organizations need IGA processes in place to ensure security, compliance and efficiency. IGA helps shield enterprises from security events that could hurt their brand or – worst-case scenario – result in the death of the business. In this cloud era, strict regulations like GDPR and a soaring number and variety of cyber threats necessitates having best-practice IGA processes in place. Deploying an IGA solution is a sound cybersecurity play but it’s also a strategic investment because it empowers the enterprise to realize business value through collaboration with partners who understand the importance of your IGA choices. Modern IGA solutions provided as a Cloud Service drastically reduced TCO compared to on premises / managed service solutions. Today, IGA vendors are able to deliver guaranteed value in less than 12 weeks.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.