Another great Gartner IAM Summit is in the books.
One Identity’s pre-holiday tradition of exhibiting, meeting with customers, interacting with our favorite analysts, and sharing our stories at the Gartner IAM Summit has once again come and gone. And 2019 may have been the most valuable yet. Not only did we learn important industry trends and see the future of IAM from the Gartner analysts and other presenters, we also gained first-hand insight into the challenges and opportunities facing the organizations we talk with every day. Here are the few key lessons:
- IGA is gaining steam. It seems like many, many organizations are now ready to move beyond the simple administrative aspects of IAM into the governance opportunities presented by IGA. And it seems like most organizations are looking for the most effective ways to do IGA for them. Gone are the days of cookie-cutter solutions. Now people want it in the manner that is right for them.
- PAM is STILL all the rage. Privileged access management has always been hot, but it seems like now it’s hotter than ever. But most organizations we talked to are looking for something more from their PAM program. Password management is important, but it’s now a commodity and the real opportunities in PAM now center on next-gen features like session audit, transparent operations, and analytics.
- The cloud is trying to catch up. While everyone talks about cloud and their strategy around achieving IAM success throughout their digital transformations, most organizations we talked with expressed reticence on the viability of a cloud-only approach to IAM (and IGA and PAM in particular). It seems many are in a wait--and-see stance, implementing cloud-only solutions where it makes sense, but approaching most IAM workloads in a hybrid model.
Our favorite part of any Gartner IAM Summit is hearing the real-world stories of IAM projects that worked and how and why they were successful. That’s why rather than dedicate our Solution Provider Session to a hard-sell of our great IAM offerings, we invite customers that have had successful outcomes to tell their stories – warts and all.
This year our panel included representatives from Colorado Governor’s Office of Information Technology, EBSCO Industries – a manufacturing conglomerate, and Investors Bank, a large regional financial services organization. The panelist were very open about identity challenges their organizations had faced and shared what made their projects successful, what lessons they learned and what they view as their next steps. The insights from what they did right and even more importantly, their missteps, provided the more than 200 session attendees with a basic roadmap their identity projects.
Each panelist closed with a piece of advice they would give someone embarking on an IAM program. I’ll close with those words of wisdom:
“If you secure the identity, you limit other exposure areas.”
“Plan, prepare, have a vision, and do not give up!”
“Start with the people and processes, the rest will follow.”
