5 Brilliant Ways to Use Identity Management and Governance
A CIO recently came to me with a question about how their peers were effectively managing organizational identity and identity governance, wanting to improve their organization’s security and productivity. Utilizing the Zero Trust security framework to improve their security posture and identity was a priority to consider as well. This inspired me to think deeply about how successful organizations get started using a powerful identity management and governance solution across all their existing environments and applications, as well as any future additions. Here are five brilliant places to start:
Technology can make our jobs easier but fast and proper access to it and the applications that drive modern organizations can still be challenging. In today’s pandemic-affected work environments, employees need to be able to work from anywhere at any time. Providing secure and reliable access to the information and applications they need to do their jobs is driving increased demand for faster, more streamlined business processes. One result? An explosion of user identities and passwords with many organizations having little in place to effectively manage or govern them.
Just how big is your organization’s password crisis? According to an article in the Evening Standard, current estimates suggest there are about 300 billion passwords in use and with approximately 7 billion people this amounts to 43 passwords per person, that’s a lot for anyone or any organization to remember and track, especially if they need to be random and unique. Not only that, in the average organization approximately 50 passwords are persistent i.e., they never change and are constantly used by an application. Fortunately, implementing identity and governance solutions, like SailPoint with powerful lifecycle capabilities, is easier than ever. These lifecycle capabilities allow administrators of any skill level to gain visibility into every system, process, user account, or access request in their environment. It provides a central platform for identity management that automates processes across your identity lifecycle: onboarding, off-boarding, provisioning, access reviews, and other tasks associated with managing an enterprise’s identities.
Using lifecycle management gives you control over how your security is managed and ensures access to sensitive data is controlled and governed. If your organization needs to do more with fewer resources, wants to boost security, enhance governance or improve onboarding/off-boarding, then lifecycle management is a must-have.
If you don’t already have a centralized identity management and governance solution in place, then managing compliance is likely a nightmare. As soon as someone moves on or leaves your organization, it’s time-consuming work to change access rights. If employees are changing roles or collaborating with people outside your company (such as contractors), getting them set up with new rights takes a lot of effort. So how do you keep everything organized? Employ an enterprise-wide identity management system. Not only will you be able to reduce regulatory risk, but you’ll also save a ton of money by simplifying compliance management. While setting one up can seem like a huge undertaking, it doesn’t need to be complicated. People who use cloud-based identity tools report improved productivity, stronger security, and faster onboarding/offboarding for new hires because they don’t need assistance from IT professionals for basic tasks. Since there’s less time spent on repetitive administration tasks, these professionals say they can focus on higher-level responsibilities.
Additionally, they allow you to protect yourself from insider threats using identity governance: combine data masking, privacy dashboards, and strong policies to help ensure employees can’t view sensitive data they shouldn’t see.
