Enterprise security posture needs to align with Identity and Access Management (IAM) Trends

The most important question every CISO or CIO concerns about optimization and efficiency around process with minimal security incident (to make a close to zero). This often leads to comparison with peers on how we are doing as an organization?”, “What is the next step for us as we build our secure environment using IAM infrastructure?” and “how to develop IAM maturity model?”

The survey revealed following drift-    

1. Security is still the top driver behind the use of identity and access management tools
2. IT administration efficiency is now the second most common motivator, with 30% of respondents from a recent Forrester survey weighting this efficiency above regulatory compliance.
3. Business agility is also a new factor, as business owners increasingly look to security professionals to solve business problems.

With the increasing sophistication of fraud rings and security attacks, coupled with the rapid adoption of various mobile and post-PC devices and the changing business environment, it will be important to consider various questions when selecting your organization's next IAM product.For example,

1. Does the product recognize risk and patterns, making fraudulent activity easily identifiable? Or, more simply, does the product work from a mobile device? While mobile browser support is a minimum requirement, mechanisms for secure PKI certificate management and centralized access auditing should also be expected. Does the product support geographic patterns and provide detection and prevention defense mechanism.

2.  Most importantly, does the product help improve business agility and demonstrate value? By proving to budget holders that substantial savings are achievable, it will be much easier to sell the product internally.

3.   Future product Strategies

4.  User Friendliness and Integration support for 3^rd party COTS-based solution and homegrown application.

5.    Integration with Service oriented environment.

To understand the facts lets analyze the Identity and access management predictions from Forrester-Despite increased spending, security and risk professionals continue to face tough vendor selection decisions.

• Prediction 1: Business agility will continue to rise in importance
• Prediction 2: Data security will come to depend on IAM
• Prediction 3: Mobile devices will need to be managed via IAM systems
• Prediction 4: IAM in the cloud will provide more than just access control