Identity and Access Management (IAM) Maturity Model

This article was originally published on September 14, 2021, and has been updated to reflect current trends. 

The Need to Mature Identity

Addressing risks of an expanded ecosystem

Organizations have been tasked with providing fast and thorough access to their corporate assets by internal and external users. A robust identity and access management (IAM) program accounts for an organization's employees, customers, contractors and devices, ensuring that stakeholders have appropriate access at the right time. Without an IAM program in place, organizations present opportunities to threat actors hunting for inappropriate access, which represents a risk to the entire enterprise.

In 2022, 5 percent of corporate revenue was lost to fraud, and more than 80 percent of insider threats were the result of malicious employees and employee negligence. Guarding against these risks doesn't require combating highly sophisticated attacks. It does, however, require an intentional review of where your identity and access management posture stands today.

A properly maintained IAM program is regularly updated and maintains internal and external compliance, measures risk, and provides thorough auditing and reporting.

Through our work with clients across industries, we have identified these common challenges:

• Organizational silos that do not include a comprehensive view of all users and access in an organization.
• Operational inefficiencies when trying to manage a multitude of access privileges spread across different platforms.
• Integrating complex legacy technology solutions with enterprise platforms.

In this report, we detail how organizations can build the IAM capabilities they need to mitigate inappropriate access and deliver value to the business.