Optimizing Identity Risk Management Doesn’t Have to Be an Uphill Climb

If you thought keeping your organization safe from identity risks was a challenge before, brace yourself: Changes in the identity landscape are making risk management tougher than ever. It’s crowded with more users and more types of users from inside and outside of the organization, creating increased risk for stolen credentials, compromised accounts and mismanaged resources. Successfully navigating around these and other hazards throughout the identity lifecycle is crucial to avoiding disaster. It isn’t for the faint of heart; it is, however, for the well-equipped. Here’s how to recognize the risks, map out a strategy to optimize the way you manage them and make sure you have the right tools to carry it out successfully.

Step 1: Do your homework.

Before you can address risks in today’s identity landscape, you have to know what risks to expect, how to recognize them and how they can hurt you. Survey your environment across on-premises, mobile and cloud applications and access points, with an eye to identifying orphaned and shared accounts, privileged users and access outliers, role changes and other risk factors that point to potential misuse of accounts or inappropriate access. Keep in mind that, given the millions of entitlements that increasingly characterize many organizations, those areas of risk can create problems on a scale far beyond what was typical only a few short years ago—problems ranging from a significantly weakened security posture to a far greater likelihood of poor audit performance.

Step 2: Plot your strategy.

Consider a plan for identity risk management that centers on identity governance as the basis for expanded visibility and control over a growing number of identities and entitlements. This will allow you to identify issues more readily and mitigate their effects as you navigate risk in the identity environment. Integrating risk management and identity governance can specifically put you in a position to be more aware of the areas of greatest risk and tag them for action before they create major problems. Good governance can also provide the information and insights you need to plan and prioritize actions based on the level of risk, allowing you to keep your efforts manageable.

Step 3: Get your gear.

Expanding visibility, identifying issues, mitigating risk: They’re all essential aspects of managing identity risk, but in a world of potentially millions of entitlements they can become overwhelming if you’re not careful. That’s why one of the keys to optimizing identity risk management is a set of automated tools for identity governance and risk management. By automating controls and processes associated with managing identity risk, you can increase speed and accuracy of access certifications and other related activities. That means less effort, waste and inefficiency as you move toward a more secure, lower-risk identity environment.

Learn more about optimizing identity risk management in today’s challenging identity landscape in this infographic.