A shockingly high proportion corporate identities are not properly protected, a new report from SailPoint has found – a particularly worrying finding as 90% of all cybersecurity breaches are reportedly identity-related.
To better understand the state of enterprise identity security, SailPoint recently polled roughly 375 global cybersecurity executives across the Americas, Europe, and Asia, finding there are “particular” security gaps around third-party identities, machine identities, and data.
“Bringing those identities under the umbrella of a strong identity management program is essential for breach avoidance,” the researchers said. “Foundational security capabilities accelerate incident response, prevent bad actors from authenticating into internal systems, and limit excessive access rights for employees — which survey respondents selected as the most common security deficiency enabling breaches.”
Not enoug money
However, fewer than half (44%) of enterprises are still at the beginning of their identity journey, the report claims. What’s more, even enterprises considered “mature” in terms of identity management cover less than 70% of the identities in their organizations.
The biggest roadblock to better identity management is budget (91%), almost all firms agree. Besides an acute lack of funds, there is a “limited executive sponsorship or focus”, worrying 77% of the respondents. “Report findings clearly demonstrate that a strong identity security program can power business agility and innovation, risk mitigation, efficiency gains, and advancement of tech initiatives,” the researchers argue. “For example, it can accelerate organizational change by as much as 30% through quicker integration of identities, applications, data and infrastructure.”
Artificial intelligence could help, SailPoint added, as AI-based solutions were observed helping businesses improve their agility. Furthermore, the number of organizations exploring AI-backed dynamic trust models to evolve access based on user behavior is on the rise, as well.
Companies leveraging SaaS, AI, and automation scale a notable 10-30% faster and get more value for their security investment through increased capability utilization, the researchers said. An AI-powered identity platform helps enterprises scale identity-related capabilities up to 37% faster than companies without AI enablement, SailPoint concluded.
