The 63rd Edition of the Identity Jedi Newsletter

WHAT’S HAPPENING THIS WEEK

Five IAM features that can make or break the business

Ok, so I saw this article while perusing the news for topics, and I immediately got excited when I read the headline. But was less enthusiastic when I read the article. Not that it wasn’t a good article; it was I didn’t see some of the features that I thought would be there. ( Yes, very narcissistic of me, I know) So I said, not only am I going to share the article, but I’ll write my list as well. Cuz yeah, ya know the whole content creator thing.

But more importantly than that, my excitement for the article was about the topic itself and the ideas it triggered. One compelling question:

What feature is most impactful to the business regarding IAM?

Think about that for a moment…

I did, and in doing so, I came up with my list of three.

• Automated lifecycle management

• Adaptive authentication

• Context-rich access reviews

As I was creating this list, I realized that I’m purely looking at this from a security standpoint because I’ve always looked at IAM as a part of security. So then I thought about it again, purely from a “what helps the business operate better” perspective, and I came up with this list.

• Access Requests

• Passwordless Authentication

• Context-rich access reviews

And let me explain what I mean by context-rich access reviews. They are access reviews that actually EXPLAIN what a user is looking at in terms of access. Adds data like “last used”, and comparative data like “73% of users in your organization also have this access” Things that give the user context into what they are approving or remediating.

So those are my features…what are yours?

The value of identity..prerequisite to Chief Identity Officer

I’ve talked about this before, but lately, based on conversations I’ve had with customers, it’s been on my mind to talk about again. Identity has to have its own place at the table. It needs a champion to drive the culture of being an identity-centric organization, maintain the necessary relationships at the executive level, and drive the success of an IAM program by connecting to the main business objectives.

This is easier to make the case when an organization has a heavy customer-facing side to their business. Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) has such a clear path to revenue-changing actions. It’s that much harder with workforce identity, but still just as important.

So before this position can even exist, we need to define what the true business value of identity is to an organization in simple dollars and sense terms.

My thoughts around this are a dual-prong value proposition of efficiency and risk.

Efficiency: For every 1 dollar invested in identity, we save 3 dollars in operating costs. Lean into the automation of it all and show the costs of manually managing things such as access reviews, provisioning, and password resets, and contrast it to the costs of procuring and implementing an identity solution to solve those issues. But here’s the catch…it kinda actually has to be cheaper. We have to be able to solve the problem for less than it currently costs to live with the problem…just food for thought.

Risk: Simply put, we need to quantify risk. I know, I know, easier said than done, but it has been done. Insurance companies have done it, so it’s doable we just have to find the model that works for us.

So many customers I’ve worked with struggle with getting their IAM programs off the ground because they don’t know how to articulate the value of identity in their organization. And quite frankly, I don’t think we as an industry know how to articulate that value. But I feel like we have enough data and experience as an industry to do so.

But until we do, I think having a CIDO would just be setting them up for failure kinda like we’ve done with CISOs.

IdentiClaus

What’s your holiday gift to identity?

Ok, so as you read, this invisible magic dust is coming from the screen and granting you the powers to make anything possible in the world of identity. But it only lasts for the time it takes you to read this newsletter. So, with that being said: What would you create and give to identity for the holidays?