The push for remote workforce has pressured organizations of all sizes to adapt to new models of business, embracing IT transformation at rapid pace. Streamlined accessibility of critical applications is more top of mind for executive leadership than ever before, as the operational livelihood of companies now depends upon employee access to conduct work from anywhere.
However, a company’s IT security posture and administrative governance remain more important than ever, as cybercriminals see unsecured home offices as attack vectors to exploit for personal gain. The rapid evolution to support “work from home” solutions for employees highlights a need to validate full coverage and completeness of your IT ecosystem, operational impacts, and cybersecurity foundation. Additionally, a robust approach to cybersecurity will help to emphasize end-user productivity and remove roadblocks for further IT transformation.
For these reasons, Identity Access Management (IAM) has become more critical to the IT department and their organization. It supports all IT activities including the security of critical IP assets while employees shift to “work from home” environments while also reducing a portion of common end-user frustrations during an unprecedented, stressful time. Constantly logging into applications to conduct tasks wastes precious employee time when an option exists to solve this inefficiency. IAM acts as a foundation to building an improved cybersecurity posture; it allows IT departments to implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) and single sign-on (SSO) access across an IT-approved suite of applications, which can be adjusted by each employee role, all managed in a single platform.
From a user experience, a person logs into a critical application as they normally would, but their sign-on would also apply to a whole suite of commonly used and IT-approved applications. No need to sign in again for the duration of their activity. On the backend, IT teams gain transparency, which increases security while reducing complecxity associated with compliance and governance. Staff can monitor who accesses what application when, add or remove approved applications for sign-on, and adjust security controls across the IT ecosystem in one platform.
IAM has captured a growing share of the overall IT budget in recent months, since business leaders want to verify that administrative capabilities don’t suffer during times of uncertainty and evolving cyber threats. Continued operations and increased productivity across the organization is executive leaders’ upmost goal, to ensure business livelihood. IAM is just one area where IT teams can reduce bottleneck in daily employee processes and remove hurdles for the adoption of other IT innovations as they become needed.
A mature IAM program can do the following for a business:
- Reduce OpEx spending through automation
- Reduce cyber risk and secure the business against cyber threats
- Increase employee satisfaction through decreased sign ins
- Ensure ongoing security as personnel change
- Maintain compliance with external regulations and internal governance policies
- Drive down IT service desk demand
IAM solutions are complex and critical to business operations but making even small changes can be difficult since all aspects of the enterprise are touched by those changes. Not to mention, IAM demands a specific cybersecurity expertise, which is difficult to staff with a tight market for IT talent. To provision a successful IAM adoption for your organization, it can be hard to know where to start, since in-house expertise may be needed to address other pressing objectives and growing new expertise takes time. For this reason, a third-party vendor is a great option to both ensure the effective adoption of IAM and cover the ongoing maintenance requirements that come along with any new IT solution.
NOTE: This blog post originally appeared as an article on TechTarget’s SearchITChannel.com:
