The increasing risk of complex security threats continues, as well as the stride at which hackers are developing new ones.
A trade-off emerges as it becomes a challenge to balance the significance of protecting business assets while assigning access and managing the cost and effort associated with digital identity management.
What’s more, is that the traditional network perimeter has become less effective in recent years.
Previously, business applications were hosted within a network firewall. The access to these applications was limited to internal employees, enabling businesses to manage these identities and understand each user’s identity context.
Businesses are increasing their online engagements; which increases the online transactions, not only among customers but also business partners and other third parties.
Therefore, the threat to a traditional network perimeter will continue to be at risk as businesses rely on on-premise and cloud applications.
A person’s digital identity is what connects them to the resources needed to perform their duties within a business. Stakeholders are placing demands on businesses to be able to connect to these resources from any device or location. While ensuring access to these resources is important, this requires a business to implement strong security over all access points.
This new network landscape is giving businesses a huge opportunity for growth if they can adopt a digital identity and access management (IAM) strategy as their new security perimeter.
There are a few ways in which an IAM strategy can enable business growth:
- Quickly deploying new online services
- Leveraging new advances in cloud computing and virtualisation
- Accommodating the needs of demanding, tech-savvy users
- Driving greater employee productivity and increasing business intelligence
So let’s dive in:
1. Quickly deploy new online services
An effective IAM strategy allows for businesses to have control over all legacy and digital applications used.
As businesses digitally transform, the use and reliance on digital applications increases.
An effective IAM strategy allows businesses to adopt and implement new applications in a seamless manner. Users who have been assigned to roles can easily be given permission to new apps without any inconvenience caused due to the adoption of new online services.
This enables businesses to grow their internal digital processes which can translate into business growth.
2. Leveraging new advances in cloud computing and virtualisation
Businesses can leverage cloud computing when implementing an IAM strategy, and they’ll be able to save huge amounts of money on their operations. It helps businesses to lower their costs on physical equipment, easy to deploy and create scalability and flexibility.
Adding cloud computing into the mix brings new risks to businesses…
An effective IAM strategy places a new set of technologies that will manage the access controls, authorisation, and authentication on private and public clouds.
Cloud computing with an effective IAM strategy in place is a huge growth opportunity for businesses. It provides employees, customers and partners to access business applications and information no matter their location. With an IAM cloud computing strategy in place, IT managers can create and manage users and groups, as well as assign permissions based on users’ attributes using a cloud-based solution.
3. Accommodating the needs of demanding, tech-savvy users
The demand to use digital applications is increasing the pressure on businesses to adopt and implement them. Businesses are receiving pressure from customers, partners and employees to adopt certain applications to help improve communication and efficiency.
An effective IAM strategy will help businesses to adopt these applications without having to worry about the added security risks they are associated with.
4. Driving greater employee productivity and increasing business intelligence
By viewing your IAM strategy as an enabler of digital transformation will allow businesses to leverage their IAM strategy to boost productivity.
Digital workplaces are common, so being able to simplify the digital workplace with IAM is vital.
IAM tools have been created to simplify the digital workplace and they achieve this by managing user identities and access permissions across businesses internal systems, employees’ devices and cloud-based technologies.
An IAM strategy will ensure internal and external users are authenticated and authorised, based on the roles of users which are assigned within the one-easy-to-use system.
Businesses have decided to digitally integrate systems and processes. An IAM strategy will aim to achieve a smooth digital integration. Employees will be able to access all their tools in a quick and seamless manner and will decrease the downtime of users not being able to login, while decreasing the valuable time lost engaging with the internal help desk.
Businesses can maintain a high-level of security while ensuring there are no barriers that interrupt a productive workflow. Businesses will gain greater intelligence on which applications carry greater risk due to which users have access as well as the information the application holds.
An effective IAM strategy will deliver growth opportunities if implemented correctly.
An IAM strategy will allow businesses to deploy new online services in a quick and timeless manner. New and improved applications are being created all the time; businesses will be more inclined to adopt applications when they have an IAM strategy in place. They know that an IAM will make it more efficient to adopt and implement these applications from a single interface. An effective IAM strategy allows a business to leverage off cloud computing solutions while maintaining high-level security and ensuring visibility on all users.
This results in less pressure placed on businesses by tech-savvy stakeholders which will allow them to drive greater productivity due to less downtime by employees and administration staff.
Perhaps all this strategic IAM talk has got you ready to take an IAM maturity assessment? Simply click on the button below to get started ?
