Confidence redefined: The cybersecurity industry needs a reboot

I’m sure many of us would like to leave 2020 behind and get back to our “normal” lives but, in some areas, I think that would be a mistake. Despite the challenges and obstacles we each faced during this time, we’ve collectively learned so much and owe it to ourselves and society to apply those learnings to create a better future.

In some ways, the world looks more familiar than it did this time last year, but — as many of us have come to realize — it will never be the same. There have been plenty of discussions about how we will make adjustments in our personal lives going forward. And, conversations around how businesses should protect their critical information assets have become more important than ever.

We’ve spent a lot of time talking about this at SailPoint over the last 18 months. As the world rapidly evolved, we were hyper-focused on how to adapt to the significant changes. We had to make quick pivots that forced us to redefine our priorities and actions to ensure both business resilience and continuity. We had to do this revisiting of priorities in our personal lives as well. All told, it was a lot of change — some good, some bad — across the board.

As we started to wrap our arms around what we wanted attendees to glean from our annual identity security conference, Navigate, we kept coming back to all the changes we’ve faced in the industry this year. It’s become clear that business leaders are struggling to define what business and security confidence looks like today. It’s for this reason, we settled on our conference theme — Navigate 2021: Confidence Redefined. Navigate ’21 will start on Aug. 17 and registration is open, here.

With Navigate ’21 less than a month away, I wanted to provide a sneak peek of what this year’s conference is all about.

“CHANGES”

David Bowie said it well with his mega-hit, “Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes”! Over the past few months, there have been obvious changes like restaurants opening back up for in-person dining; people starting to travel more, and businesses are allowing employees to office spaces again. However, there are some not so obvious changes that impact businesses. One major change is the reality of a virtual or flex work environment; many employees are working remotely, while some are going back into the office a couple of hours or days a week.

As businesses continue to adjust to the virtual and flex workplace, a common fear is loss of productivity and, ultimately, damage to their bottom line. While many enterprises were already on a “digital transformation” journey, this new dynamic has added the need for fresh thinking. As a result, many organizations are implementing new applications to ensure day-to-day activities remain seamless, but are unknowingly — or, in some cases, knowingly — sacrificing security in the process. This is an expansive area of risk for many businesses. Truth be told, the human (and even non-human) workforce will always come with a certain risk level, but now a distributed workforce often provides malicious actors with more opportunities to do their dirty work; most organizations have created a larger “attack surface” as a result of the pandemic.

To allow their businesses to thrive going forward, the key for leaders in both IT and business is to focus on enablement and security – providing access to important technology and tools but properly controlling access to keep your business and your customers’ critical assets protected.

Although virtual business has become more common, the reality is that no business — virtual or not — can safely use technology without thinking through how to properly secure access to business information it holds. For example, some questions to consider when determining access:

• Which people (or things) should be given access?
• How long will they need access?
• Should they have access while using another system?
• What is the process to shut down access when someone leaves or changes roles?

And how can companies become more efficient and effective by leveraging AI and ML technologies to automate and streamline some of these critical decisions?

“HERE COMES THE SUN”

Leave it to the Beatles to give us hope for the road ahead. The future of security is increasingly focused on a specific lens: Identity. Because securing your business means securing your people and their access to technology, enterprise security through the lens of identity is essential. Identity security is required to securely and (you guessed it) confidently, ensure everyone has exactly the right access – no more, no less.

Organizations should be able to discover, manage, and secure every single “identity” in the enterprise — both human (like employees and contractors) and non-human (like software bots and IoT devices). In larger enterprises, identities can connect to upwards of billions of technology access points and entitlements. All of which are constantly changing as the needs of the business and your people change.

Today, C-level conversations are centered around the need for full confidence that their business is resilient to risk as they change to a hybrid working model, deploying new technology to remain competitive. Identity security has become a critical component of risk management and is the surest path forward to fully protect the “corporate digital identity” of any business.

Now is the time for businesses to re-evaluate their security strategy and make sure identity security is at the foundation. After all, you can’t confidently run a business without protecting access to technology assets that are critical to your organization. Perhaps it is time for you to “reboot your security strategy” with identity security at the core and redefine your confidence knowing your critical assets are protected.

Are you confident in your organizations’ identity security strategy? If your answer wasn’t immediately “yes,” you can start to elevate your understanding and see how your peers are addressing these issues by attending Navigate 2021: Confidence Redefined starting Aug. 17. And, there might even be a nod to the song references above! For details and to register, visit: Navigate.SailPoint.com