Page 135 - Cyber Defense eMagazine June 2024

1.) Unrealistic Expectations

Whether its vendors overselling their capabilities or the belief that Rome was built in a day, unrealistic
expectations are bound to leave you disappointed. The most impactful way to demonstrate progress is
to show broad value to a large audience immediately. When you consider a time not too long ago when
you had to spend 30 minutes on the phone with the HelpDesk to reset your password, this isn’t as hard
as it may sound. Set up your IGA initiative, deploy it, make it widely available, and above all, make sure
it makes work easier for users. When employees understand and see the value in new processes, it can
help facilitate more complex IT projects where the results may not be as visible.

2.) Forced Change

You may not have been in the market to upgrade your legacy on-prem IGA solution, but what if your
vendor is migrating to the cloud? Even in the name of digital transformation, a massive tech overhaul can
feel like anything but an improvement. So, do you grin and bear it or seek out another IGA solution
entirely? While it seems daunting, choosing a new IGA solution can be a strategic opportunity to
streamline productivity and strengthen security. Those who choose the latter approach should explore
leveraging their existing IT competencies and tech stack to see if there’s a solution that works with their
current systems and processes.

3.) Poor Support

Many identity vendors address the high cost of deployment and management by offering SaaS versions
of their application. But these solutions lack feature parity with previous solutions, and are less
customizable and functional due to cloud architecture. This means if you’re forced to upgrade, you’re
also forced to adjust business processes to fit what’s available in the new solution. When you run your
IGA program on your existing business platform, you remove the need to choose between security,
flexibility, and maintenance. This approach provides not only a common user interface (UI) across a
variety of IT and business areas, but a strong cloud architecture and streamlined workflows.

4.) Biting Off More than You Can Chew

The average business uses 371 SaaS applications (Productiv). The role of IGA is to maintain security
and minimize risk of said apps. Yet, few have full connectors to bring them into your IGA solution. Instead,
most are managed by IT Service Management (ITSM) processes or outside IT altogether. Not only is this
a huge undertaking, but it leaves organizational silos and security gaps. Automating IGA tasks can help
streamline efforts to ensure all applications are under governance in one single system or platform. By
coupling IGA and ITSM with automated workflows, IT teams can bridge once disconnected systems and
better manage all enterprise applications.

Cyber Defense eMagazine – June 2024 Edition 135
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