Identity Services: A Driving Force Behind the Success of the New IT Department?
Last week, I outlined a real-life scenario of the challenges facing CIOs every day. In this article, I will cover the changing world of the enterprise ecosystem and how identity services may hold the key to more diverse collaboration in a secure global environment.
Organizations are increasingly expanding the levels of interaction within the enterprise ecosystem, which includes employees, customers, partners, suppliers and subcontractors working over multiple timezones and geographies. This leads to a rise in the number of third parties requiring employee-type access to corporate data and internal systems. Equally, customers, partners and suppliers are increasingly being able to interact directly with ERP and CRM systems.
This is all leading to an explosive growth in the number of data stores and applications outside the firewall, often outside the reach and control of audit, IT and security departments.
The challenge for the new IT department is to transform into an internal service provider; be an enabler of agile business processes; a thought leader and ultimately a source of inspiration.
BYOD is now a reality not a myth
Industry analyst firm Gartner predicts that worldwide combined shipments of devices (PCs, tablets and mobile phones) will reach 2.32 billion units in 2013, a 4.5 percent increase from 20121. The market is being driven by a shift to lower-priced devices in nearly all device categories.
Today’s employee demands versatile collaboration and agile data access from anywhere, at any time and from any device – personal or professional. This places additional pressure on the IT department to permit and enable such a free flow of data, all the while making sure that only the right people get access to the right data, and nobody else.
The key authorization link for this free flow of data is -- identity.
When you add in the fact that many enterprises are moving to the cloud, and (therefore) shifting from perimeter security to data protection within the enterprise, the identity solutions that have traditionally been deployed cannot support todays’ demanding, hybrid IT environments. They are also, generally, too costly to extend to third parties; too internally-focused; inflexible and often over-engineered for the enterprise’s actual requirements.
In short -- they do not support the challenges of business today.
When you then add in the increasing amount of data breaches linked to authentication mechanisms in the last few years (according to the “Verizon 2013 Data Breach Investigations Report,” weak or stolen passwords and credentials account for 76 percent of data breaches, underscoring the need for stronger online identities) – then you get an Identity Sector heading for a crisis.
This is a red flag to the enterprise – and demands that they begin to think differently about their enterprise architecture.
The answer lies in restoring the concept of ‘trust’ into ‘identity’ via a global identity ecosystem that will improve the privacy, security and convenience of sensitive online transactions. This requires a platform that puts control back into the hands of the enterprise, that can flex as business requirements change. But the vision is to deliver a single, trusted universal identity that individuals can use for all online activities, whether at home, at work or on the go.
This is where Verizon comes in. We address these challenges with a wide range of fully-managed identity and privacy services that complement our comprehensive, global solution and service portfolio. The objective is to enable accessibility from anywhere; substantially increase agility and flexibility and enable predictable costs, even as business needs flex.
IT departments are indeed facing increased challenges as the business environment evolves. But while this may lead to an “identity crisis” as they look to redevelop the scope of their operations, the good news is that identity management itself no longer needs to cause a crisis.
_______________________________________________________________
1Gartner's detailed market forecast data is available in the report, "Forecast: Devices by Operating System and User Type, Worldwide, 2010-2017, 3Q13 Update." The report is on Gartner's website at http://www.gartner.com/resId=2596420.
_______________________________________________________________
Please click to learn more about Verizon’s Universal Identity Services
