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5 Ways to Boost Security by Transforming Workforce Identity

If you’re not already transforming workforce identity security, drop everything and make it your number one digital transformation priority. Why? Until you get it right, you’re slowing down the rest of your transformation.

Workforce identity security helps you champion digital transformation by mitigating the risk of a breach of sensitive business resources, such as applications, APIs and data.

Put multi-factor authentication everywhere

The average cost of a data breach in the U.S. is $8.19M and $3.92M globally.1 (But yours isn’t an average size business, is it?) 52% of data breaches are due to hacking, and of those, 80% are due to weak or compromised passwords.2 Multi-factor authentication (MFA) can reduce password risk by 99.9%.3 Putting MFA everywhere is a no-brainer.

Impose least-privilege access

Consumer data privacy and regulations are top of mind as more cases of data misuse come to light. 23% of sensitive data breaches are caused by internal employees,4 so they shouldn’t have access to everything just because they’re on the network. To mitigate risk, enforce least-privileged access and establish Zero Trust security for apps, APIs and data.

Empower application admins

By 2020, a third of successful attacks on enterprises will be on their shadow IT resources.5 Centralized identity and access management (IAM) forces app teams to make IT aware of a resource when they want to use identity services. But if it’s a hassle, they’ll avoid this step. Establish a central IAM operating portal with delegated administration so business users can help themselves to security.

Consolidate to centralized IAM

Over time, silos of IAM solutions have built up across your organization, often due to shadow IT or M&A activity. IT security and IAM teams struggle to keep these systems on their radar and propagate security policy changes in response to new threats. You need an IAM platform that lets you rationalize legacy systems and reduce your overall attack surface.

Automate low-value, manual tasks

IAM and IT security professionals should be spending their time on projects that boost security. But instead, they’re wasting time on password resets, fulfilling onboarding and administration requests from app owners, and customizing legacy tools. Shifting to a solution that leverages automation and self-service lets IT spend that time mitigating risks instead.

1 Ponemon 2019 Cost of a Data Breach Report

2 Verizon 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report

3 Microsoft Security Intelligence Report, 2018

4 Forrester Analytics Global Business Technographics Security Survey, 2019

5 Gartner’s Top 10 Security Predictions, 2016

When you transform workforce identity, you deliver quantifiable security benefits. Learn how workforce identity solutions drive measurable business value—and calculate it now.

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