EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
What are we seeing?
Organizations are aggressively pursuing the implementation and expansion of identity and access management (IAM) technologies. Nearly 60% percent of business decision-makers rank this objective as a priority.
Identity verification enables security leaders to quickly detect malicious users on the networks. This is of increasing importance in the era of working-from-home and remote access to corporate resources.
“The reality is that no one really plans to have their entire company [start] work[ing] from home in the space of 48 or 72 hours…Being able to manage user access and private network access is a big challenge,” says CISO John Masserini, for an international telecommunications company. But a hacker who successfully infiltrates a network presents the biggest challenge of all.
Why infiltrate a business?
From the perspective of a cyber criminal, infiltrating a business’s network is an attractive proposition for the following reasons:
- An identity thief can potentially access business bank accounts with large balances. In some instances, it’s possible that meddling will not be detected in a timely manner.
- Businesses retain higher credit limits than the average consumer. Business credit card compromise may enable hackers to make undetected fraudulent transactions.
- Sensitive information that can fetch high prices on the dark web is often easily available. Think social security numbers, addresses, phone numbers and names.
- Tracking down and prosecuting identity thieves is often a difficult undertaking.
How has the landscape shifted in recent months?
“What I’m seeing is an acceleration of what would normally take several years happening in one year,” said Gary Gooden, CISO for Seattle Children’s Healthcare System.
IT professionals in healthcare have had to reconfigure identity access management systems to keep up with continual staffing changes and reassignments. A nurse who’s normally stationed in the cardiology unit may now routinely work in the post-coronavirus rehabilitation center.
For more information on identity access management in the age of the coronavirus, visit The Wall Street Journal.