Smashing silos with unified Identity

Welcome back to Access Granted Newsletter, our monthly deep dive into the latest in Identity and security. With so much noise out there, we’re here to surface the best, so you can skip the rest.

Today’s topic > Unified Identity. As the threat landscape grows more complex, this relatively new approach is on the rise. But what is it, and why is it gaining so much traction? We’ll get into it — but first, some context.

Bad actors are lurking. In recent years, Identity has become a magnet for bad actors looking to breach your security. In fact, a 2024 report by the Identity Defined Security Alliance found that 90% of studied organizations experienced an Identity-related incident in the previous year. Those failures can be expensive, too; breaches caused by stolen or compromised credentials cost businesses an average of $4.88 million, according to the Ponemon Institute.?

The trouble with silos. While Identity’s role within security has never been more critical, not all modern approaches are created equal. A fragmented strategy — where you utilize many different Identity solutions across your ecosystem for user authentication, access management, threat intelligence, and governance — can have serious drawbacks:?

• All those applications may not integrate well with each other, making it harder to detect and respond to potential Identity threats during and after authentication
• Maintaining so many tools can add operational friction, sapping your teams’ time and focus
• Your users may need separate login credentials for each vendor, increasing your organization’s exposure to potential phishing attacks (which account for 16% of breaches, according to IBM)?

Extending beyond authentication. Security and IT leaders often direct their focus to authentication enforcement. But by overemphasizing the moment of attack, it’s possible to miss opportunities to prevent attacks and mitigate damage before and after authentication. Taking a holistic approach to Identity can yield a stronger defense against threats by expanding the focus beyond authentication.

A unified alternative. That’s why a growing number of organizations are taking a more comprehensive approach. Gartner predicts that by next year, “70% of new access management, governance, administration, and privileged access deployments will be converged Identity and Access Management platforms.”

A unified approach to Identity allows you to:

• Gain a holistic view of Identity to uncover vulnerabilities and determine proper access?
• Ensure the enforcement of secure-by-design access policies across users, resources, and devices
• Detect and respond to threats faster to head off authentication-based attacks

The bottom line. Single sign-on and multi-factor authentication alone are no longer enough to secure an organization from Identity-based attacks or risks. A unified approach to Identity lets organizations more easily discover gaps in their security posture and solve end-to-end use cases for IT and security teams.?

Learn more about how unified Identity can power security outcomes in our upcoming fireside chat with industry-leading CISOs.