Immense growth opportunities in identity, access management technology

CHENNAI: The immense new growth opportunities in Identity and Access Management Technology were discussed at the conference organized by analyst firm Frost & Sullivan here today.

Identity and access management is one of the fastest growing areas in the security market. It is a process where all the different elements or technologies that make up the solution play a key role in the successful management of digital users or identities.

Despite the over-hype that affected the growth of some related markets, identity and access management technology is being widely implemented and growth potential is still huge. However, the concept is not very clearly defined and many vendors are adapting their marketing messages announcing a new positioning as identity management providers.

Delivering his address, Alok Shende, director of ICT Practice at Frost & Sullivan said: “Identity and access management is a fast growth market and is starting to show signs of maturity. The idea of connecting organizations with each other, allowing them to provision and de-provision users and share access to critical applications is appealing but one with an obvious challenge — the level of trust and privacy between partners. However, while people issues will need to be properly addressed, the technology is already available and customers are already taking advantage of it.”

The benefits that identity management solutions provide far outweigh the costs. The development of common standards and the uptake of other technologies such as web services will allow the market to develop further and evolve into a federated model. At the moment most of the solutions are developed for internal users but businesses are likely to increase capabilities to third parties such as customers and partners in the medium term.

“We are witnessing a lot of excitement around the Identity and Access management technology today. Enterprises are beginning to view IAM solutions in the context of risk mitigation for their applications infrastructure, and not as a standalone solution,” said R Dhamodaran, vice president for ISV and Developer Relations, IBM India.

“An increase in awareness, willingness to implement security process and strategic changes in the current business environment, will be important factors for more and more enterprises to drive IAM growth.” he added.

Frost & Sullivan defines identity and access management as “the process of managing authentication, access rights, privileges and administration of digital users.”

As organizations open their networks to increasing numbers of employees, customers and partners, they are faced with the challenge of providing accounts to multiple users with the appropriate level of access to applications and resources. As a result, large enterprises are beginning to demand comprehensive identity and access management solutions that can provide self-service to end users in a secure environment while addressing all aspects of user administration, authentication and access control.

Along with trust building processes companies must take measures to secure parts of the network to which third parties have access, to ensure that they themselves do not cause security risk.

Federated Identity Management is a system that recognizes the fact that individuals move between corporate boundaries at an increasingly frequent rate. It allows individuals to use the same user name, password or other personal identification to sign on to the networks of more than one enterprise in order to conduct transactions.

Several governments such as the US, Canada have strict legislation, which companies have to comply with. In the US, financial services, healthcare, pharmaceuticals and the energy industries require the establishment of a secure access control infrastructure. However, there is still room for improvement in this area and as legislation becomes better defined then it will become a more important growth factor in the market.

In 2005, the Identity and access management world market was worth $1.63 billion, a growth of 25.2 per cent compared to 2004. The market is expected to reach 4.44 billion by the end of 2012, which represents a compound annual growth rate of 15.4 per cent.

In 2005, the APAC market was worth $160.7 million, a growth of 29.8 per cent from $123.8 million in 2004. This region is expected to reach $573.7 million by the end of 2012, which represents a CAGR of 19.9 per cent.

One of the areas of future development is identity federation.

The “Emerging Paradigms on Information Security” conference articulated the stepping-stones for enterprise security for new and prospective users.

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