Research firms Gartner and IDC are both forecasting global IT spending slumps in 2016, but identity and access management (IAM) may be a bright spot, according to a new survey from authentication and single sign-on provider SecureAuth, conducted by marketing research and consulting firm Decision Analyst.
The vast majority (77 percent) of respondents to the survey of 239 security decision-makers in the U.S. and the U.K. indicated that plans are underway in their organization for new investment in IAM of externally focused website and applications.
“As cybercrime grows increasingly more sophisticated, companies must ramp up their efforts to improve their cybersecurity posture,” said Jeff Kukowski, COO of SecureAuth. “Today’s perimeter isn’t what it used to be, expanding to include the cloud and other networks managed by partners and service providers. This evolving perimeter has forced teams to revamp their approach to focus on building tougher access and authentication barriers around data, applications and internal resources. Our survey findings with Decision Analyst demonstrate that organizations are realizing this hard truth and expanding their definition of perimeter to include identity.”
Drivers for new identity projects
When asked why their company has initiated new identity projects in the past year, 56 percent of respondents across small, medium and large companies indicated that the deployment of new applications was the top driver. Board and/or senior management’s drive for increased security was also cited by 50 percent of respondents as a chief reason for new identity project initiation, underscoring that cybersecurity has indeed become a board-level concern.
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“It’s no secret that security has become a board room-level imperative,” said Craig Lund, CEO of SecureAuth. “A decade ago, it was a nice to have; today, it’s a must have. Accordingly, organizations across the globe are abandoning their laissez-faire approaches to cybersecurity and significantly increasing security spending for the coming years.”
Another interesting finding from the survey is that 43% of respondents said they were initiating new IAM projects to save costs compared to previous solutions. "IDC data from 2015 shows that no single IAM vendor has more than 12% of the total market. One has to ask why this is true and does it correlate to enterprises looking for more flexible approaches with a better total cost of ownership," said Jeff Kukowski, COO at SecureAuth. "Other organizations tell us that the existing vendors they may use for access management may have a competitive offering, but even as the incumbent the offerings are too cumbersome, expensive and time consuming to implement for additional applications," Kukowski added. "Virtually 100% of our enterprise deals either replace or complement existing identity and access management (IAM) vendors for this reason. Our solution is thought of as ‘next generation’ not only because it has rich adaptive capabilities, but also because it was architected to deploy in hours or days versus the typical enterprise deployment timeframes of months and years.