6 Trends IT Leaders Need to Know about Enterprise Identity

With a fast-growing, frequently moving, highly distributed workforce, identity management and security have come to the forefront for IT leaders. Add advances in technology, cloud proliferation, and equally evolving cyber threats, and we’ve reached an inflection point for digital identity. And despite the field having been around for nearly 30 years, we still have a lot to learn.

To distill what those lessons are, we first need to understand the challenges, use cases, and behaviors driving our current approach to identity. The “2022 Identity Management Survey” seeks to achieve this, compiling the need-to-know details about identity practices from more than 500 knowledge workers living in the space every day. Of the respondents, a majority (60%) hold IT job functions—folks right in the trenches. From their responses, here are the 6 trends that emerged.

1.) Enterprises Rely on Multiple Identity Management Solutions…

Over half of respondents with IT job functions indicated that they work with several vendors for identity governance, risk, compliance, single sign-on, PAM, and/or security operations. This is a lot for security functions alone. As you can imagine, switching between multiple, disparate systems can be a source of frustration and distraction for workers. This often leads to IT interventions or using insecure workarounds to simply get work done. Leaders should look to solutions that enable identity security functions within their existing tech stack to avoid these challenges.

2.) …but Fewer Applications Result in Improved Productivity

In fact, 45% of respondents with IT job functions said they expected a high productivity boost from using fewer applications or systems, and 41% of respondents outside the realm of IT concurred. Less is more when it comes to the number of technical tools and applications we expect employees to use on a regular basis. The evidence is clear: there are too many disparate solutions and applications at play, and it’s affecting workers’ ability to perform their best. Beyond the survey results, it’s well documented that context-switching—required to bounce between systems—can slash productivity from 20-80%, increasing with each new task.

3.) UX Tops the List of Identity Challenges

Not surprisingly, user experience (UX) topped the list of challenges across most segments in the survey—even more than cost. Multiple solutions and applications in use are a likely a contributor here. Of respondents in technical roles, cost, and time to access or fulfillment rounded out the top three challenges. As evidenced, without a seamless UX, productivity suffers, and with it, overall business operations. Leaders must empower employees with the tools and processes they need to succeed. This is equally, if not more important than providing customers with an optimal UX.

4.) ITSM, Email, and Excel are the Preferred Methods for Application and Entitlement Management”

Respondents from medium and large companies, as well as those with IT job functions cited IT Service Management (ITSM)/workforce management platforms as the most popular option for controlling permissions and entitlements. It’s encouraging to see the trend of more mature organizations managing identity within their ITSM platforms. That said, it’s surprising and concerning to see that email and spreadsheets were the next choices for controlling application permissions and entitlements. This is something enterprises need to get ahead of, ideally before a breach or audit.

5.) Microsoft 365 is the Platform of Choice

Respondents who work at small companies cited using Google’s platform and tools at a higher rate, while those who work at large companies preferred Microsoft 365. Over a third (35%) of respondents who work at large companies said their company uses ServiceNow. Regardless of the platform, enterprises would be wise to explore the features and applications built into their existing platform investments. By syncing identity management and security with processes and tools already in place, leaders can avoid the cost and complications of a major tech overhaul, curb employee learning curves, and have assurance that tools will seamlessly.

6.) AI isn’t Delivering Real Value—Yet

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are being used to automate tasks and workflows across many domains and industries. Security-related tasks are no exception—automating, identifying which employees need access to which data or system, and anomaly detection are a few of these applications. But while two-thirds of survey respondents indicated that their company uses AI/ML to improve identity management, less than a third of them indicated that the technology yields moderate to high benefits for identity management. Despite its potential, it appears it’s still early days for AI in identity.

Enterprises have made great strides when it comes to identity management and security, but we’re not moving fast enough. With the pace of technology, it’s crucial that business leaders approach identity through the lens of security and usability to ensure they’re getting the most of their identity initiatives and solutions. As the research points to, ITSM is a good place to start. This will help mitigate challenges with UX, and managing multiple vendors, and applications. This is half the battle, and it’s something leaders can implement today.

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