Ping: Importance of IAM is on the rise
29 November, 2016
category: Corporate, Digital ID, Financial
As organizations start exploring more digital initiatives, including cloud and mobile, the importance of identity and access management (IAM) is becoming paramount. IT professional agree that IAM is important to their digital success – 90% — but it’ also become an executive level priority with 84% of respondents’ senior leadership teams think IAM is critical to adoption of cloud, and 89% agree it’s critical to mobility initiatives.
Ping Identity surveyed 200 IT decision makers in the U.S., U.K., France and Germany and released the “The State Of Identity & Access Management For The Digital Enterprise 2016.”
Within the enterprise single sign-on is the most popular IAM technology – 92% — followed by enterprise use secure access at 90%. Some 80% of those surveyed were using multi-factor authentication.
The U.S. leads IAM adoption, with 96% of organization surveyed having single sign-on but lags other countries when it comes to multi-factor authentication. Germany has much higher adoption of MFA for employees: 60% of German organizations have adopted MFA for employees versus only 53% of the total group.
On the consumer side of things, IAM is also important. A security roadblock or breach can turn a loyal customer into a lost opportunity. IAM plays a role in securing data and protecting enterprises from the consequences of a breach. Having the right security measures in place helps build trust with customers, and that translates into revenue growth.
Security strategies are rapidly becoming focused on identity. Some 86% agree that IAM technologies have helped secure customer experiences, and 89% also view it as important to customer experience and engagement.
Eliminating friction is crucial to customer engagement success so it’s not surprising that MFA has not taken off as quickly with customer use cases as it has with employees. Customers can sometimes view the additional security steps as a frustrating obstacle.
However, it is still gaining significant traction considering it is still a relatively new approach. Plus, many organizations are beginning to implement MFA only for high risk or high value transactions, such as access to payment information in a profile, an unusual activity pattern or purchases over a certain price threshold. While customer IAM adoption is low, enterprises that use IAM for customers are very satisfied with how their IAM infrastructure enables better customer interactions and improves ease of management and security.
The Internet of Things is on the horizon for organization and their IAM systems. Some 81% indicated that IAM is important to IoT initiatives and identity will continue to be an important part of how enterprises adapt for IoT and other new technologies.
