Conquer the CISO’s top challenge with powerful identity and access management solutions

By Julissa Caraballo

September 5, 2023

A recent report on the challenges faced by CISOs in today’s security environment showed a need to focus on identity and access management. 

The "CISO Survival Guide," a new report from Cisco Systems Inc., explores the most urgent cybersecurity challenges faced by today’s security leaders. Current technologies are continually advancing – to both our benefit and our detriment. When implemented, many new tools and capabilities simultaneously introduce an equally powerful potential risk. As a result, 85% of the CISOs and IT decision-makers polled for Cisco’s report responded that they’re prioritizing identity and access management (IAM) investments above all other security solutions.

Why identity and access management?

The variety and sophistication of today’s cyberattacks continue to expand every day, and security leaders want to be prepared for each new development. Most CISOs feel they lack the kind of unified IAM platform they need to secure their organizations, with many also worried about privileged access management (PAM) and identity governance and administration (IGA). Ideally, they’d like technologies that can consolidate IAM, PAM, and IGA into a single, unified platform.

IAM ranks highest in CISOs’ lists of concerns, because digital identity and access is their most acute pain point. The countless users, roles, devices, and locations of today’s IT ecosystem have led to constant changes in digital identity and a perpetual state of high risk.

This nonstop barrage of identity challenges has made it difficult to meet IAM goals according to over 50% of security leaders polled. Simultaneously, a powerful IAM solution is what’s needed to maintain security as your organization implements new technologies.

A streamlined path to results

Many security solutions require manual tuning to align with and protect customer environments. This increases friction and workloads, while also opening the door to user error – particularly when IT teams are already overworked.

The ideal digital identity platform should not only be comprehensive and integrated, but it should also leverage automation to simplify and streamline workloads and improve results.

Conquering IAM challenges also calls for capabilities that allow you to:

  • Ensure secure access from any location
  • Manage control over sensitive data
  • Implement a Zero Trust architecture (ZTA)
  • Cover cloud infrastructure
  • Monitor user behavior for simple audits
  • Detect anomalous behavior to mitigate risk
  • Implement advance authentication methods, including multifactor authentication (MFA) and single sign-on (SSO) to advance security while boosting efficiency and productivity

Learn more about IAM – and IAM automation – with our eBook, Automate Identity and Access Management Processes.