Regulatory, security concerns drive Enterprise IdM market

BANGALORE, INDIA: The Identity and Access Management (IdM) market is one of the fastest growing, as indicated by industry analysts such as IDC, Gartner, Radicati Group, Burton Group, etc.

According to the Radicati Group, the IdM market, with all of its segments, will grow to over $8.5 billion by 2008. In Asia Pac, the Identity Access Management market is likely to reach $573.7 million by the end of 2012 from $160.7 million in 2005.

Identity and Access Management, as Frost and Sullivan defines it, is: “The process of managing authentication, access rights, privileges and administration of digital users.”

It is the 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.

An Identity Access Management solution besides, securing the enterprises, also enables them to adhere to regulations, bring in accountability and auditability.

Explains Sameer Karmarkar, Product Manager Identity Aware, Persistent Systems, “Identity Access Management is an integrated system of business processes, policies and technologies that enable organizations to facilitate and control their users' access to critical online applications and resources — while protecting confidential personal and business information from unauthorized users.”

Madhu Ganguly, VP, Global Alliances & APAC, ILantus Technologies adds, “Identity and Access Management is about creating and managing all digital identities in an enterprise – whether it is a user ID/password, smart card, token/certificate and the access rights and privileges associated with these IDs.”

Why traction toward Identity Access Management?

The IdM market is experiencing tremendous growth as indicated by figures from research houses. IdM solutions have moved beyond the early adopter stage of the solution life cycle as well.

 This growth has been pushed by number of factors including security concerns and the need to conform to standards, requirements and regulations, such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), HIPAA, RBI Guidelines, BASEL II and EU Data Privacy acts.

Coupled with the ever-increasing costs of maintenance of systems and administering users, complexity of heterogeneous environments, business functionalities and IT management in general are driving the IT spend on IdM solutions.

Says Rob Dyson, CISSP, Partner, Accenture Technology Consulting (ATC): “Increasingly, companies across the globe are adopting a standard program to grant authorizations to company assets that is measurable through strict reporting. Only an enterprise identity management solution provides this level of security and the best CIOs know this.”

Dyson adds that the increased regulatory pressure to secure corporate assets is also forcing companies to implement increase security solutions.

“Implementing Identity Access Management is no longer a choice for enterprises as standards like SOX, RBI Guidelines or BASEL make it clear that you have to adhere to these regulations,” he notes.

Muneer Taskar, Director Sales, Persistent Systems Inc. says, “An IdM solution besides, securing the enterprise, also enables them to adhere to these regulations, bringing in accountability and auditability.”

Indian enterprises slowly waking up to Identity Access Management

Like their global counterparts, the demand for Identity Access Management among Indian enterprises is fuelled by the increasing incidences of corporate fraud, compliance mandates and business complexities in major industries like banking and finance, software, BPO and telecom.

Organizations such as India’s National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) and regulations such as the India Information Technology Act of 2000 are serving to create awareness among Indian companies about the need for secure technology environments.

Nasscom is also serving as an advisory body for government agencies on the need for stricter governance and enforcement of cyber security requirements.

However, as the Global State of Information Security 2006 survey pointed out, Indian enterprises are seriously lagging behind their global counterparts to implement IdM.

The survey conducted by CSO magazine, CIO magazine, and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), with 7,791 respondents in 50 countries indicated that: “India lags far behind the rest of the world in instituting even the most basic information security practices and tools,” and many Indian companies admitted to not adhering to the most routine security practices.

Dyson at ATC points out that Indian companies are not very serious about security and lag the rest of the industrialized world in this area.

“This is most likely because the demand for growth has been so extreme that it is taking a lot of energy just to provide the required services, and therefore, shortcuts are taken, which unfortunately, tend to be in the area of security,” he adds.

However this lackadaisical approach toward security, warns Dyson, could have significant impacts on the Indian economy, as Indian companies will lose the trust of their global clients.

“Breach of security is unacceptable. And, if the breach happens more than once, the loss of trust could happen rapidly,” adds Dyson.

Dyson further comments that as more companies begin to run their critical business operations from India, there is an increased need for stronger security solutions that include access controls – that are provided by IdM solutions.

Madhu Ganguly at ILantus, however adds an optimistic note and says: “There is certainly a lot more awareness and interest being shown in the market than there has been in the last six to 12 months. There are some progressive organizations that have gone ahead with complex Identity and Access Management deployments over the last few quarters and many more that are evaluating solutions.

“Several organizations, especially in the SMB sector, have taken small steps in terms of starting small with solutions like password management, access control, Web SSO or enterprise SSO.”

Next part of series: Does IdM solutions make sense for SMBs