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How to Integrate Identity Governance Into Your Business Strategy

A strong identity governance strategy enables enterprises to safeguard information, facilitate compliance, and streamline work processes. Despite the benefits, implementing these processes has been perceived as a complex, on-premises project that takes an army of consultants to deploy. While this can be true in some cases, 76% of enterprise organizations are looking to replace their existing identity governance and administration (IGA) system (Gartner). 

This number and other recent research proves we need to find ways to make identity governance more approachable in order for businesses to realize its true value. Fortunately, there are proactive steps companies can take to ensure identity governance is ingrained in their business strategy without the headaches. And it starts with four proactive approaches any business can take to achieve long-term, continual success.

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Identity Management Day: Cause for Celebration or Concern?

Tuesday, April 13 marks Identity Management Day — a time to bring awareness to business leaders, IT decision-makers, and others about the importance of managing and securing digital identities. It’s a nice concept: businesses coming together to share best practices, vendors supporting the cause, and an overall push for better security hygiene. But is there actually a reason to celebrate?

Securing your network is a journey, not a destination. Not just on one day, but every day. As such, identity management (IM) shouldn’t be celebrated as a singular component of security, but rather a capability that should be ingrained in the data governance fabric of every organization. With the ability to safeguard information, facilitate compliance, and streamline work processes, it's hard to believe that it’s not already.

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Risky Business: Preparedness Lessons Learned from the Florida Water Plant Hack

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone in the IT security space who will argue against the importance of risk preparedness. Unfortunately, more often than not, people will talk-the-talk without walking the proverbial walk. It sounds smart: be ready for potential attacks before they happen. But we have a long way to go to put this sentiment into practice. Accidents are unplanned, and we're never quite as prepared as we should be. The "that will never happen to us" attitude is rampant among the enterprise, especially when it comes to cybersecurity.

Risk preparedness is something organizations need to start taking seriously, as seen by the recent Florida water plant hack, among others. If they don't, the outcomes could be devastating. Imagine a stadium of sick Super Bowl attendees or worse. While the focus has been largely on protecting big businesses or federal entities with lots of valuable data, no one is truly safe from bad actors — not even local municipalities. In fact, these could be even more dangerous targets when you consider something as serious as compromising a community’s water supply or information theft. 

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6 Security Predictions for 2021—And Why They Matter

Understanding industry trends is important for any IT professional, but it’s especially critical for anyone working in security. Teams need to be able to stay a step ahead of a wide range of security threats. With the global COVID-19 pandemic altering the way enterprise organizations do business and their employees work, it’s been a particularly challenging year to achieve this, all while ensuring that the new tools employees need to stay connected and productive don’t put individuals, or the enterprise, at risk. 

Just as the nature of our work style and lives have changed, so too has the threat landscape and the security tools we use to combat it. We’re constantly learning about emerging and ongoing security trends that will impact businesses and customers globally, but with breaches du jour, it’s often hard to know which are the most important. That said, there are six factors that IT and business leaders should keep top of mind to kick off the new year right. 

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The Death of Passwords

The Problem With Passwords

If you’ve been paying attention to cybersecurity trends over the last few years, you’ll already know that security problems are frequently found “between chair and keyboard” (often shortened to PEBCAK in IT circles). The dangers of bad password hygiene are better known by “average” users than ever, with 81 percent of company data breaches caused by poor passwords.

At the same time, technology is reaching further into the corners of our lives, both at work and at home. Because password technology puts the onus on individuals to safely and securely manage their own access methods, users are increasingly put in positions where they’re responsible for security problems.