Managing Risk in the Scramble for Identity Data

Happy customers, empowered employees

You’ve probably experienced the pain of joining a company only to find out that you can’t access mission-critical apps and programs that allow you to do your job to the best of your ability. For many large companies, inadequate identity and access management stem from HR systems that have failed to successfully capture quality data. The challenge? Understanding a new recruit’s digital persona, the role that they will play in an organisation and accurately defining those entitlements. 

Ideally, identity and access management should be proactive rather than reactive. Setting the profile for a new hire’s digital attributes in advance can turn onboarding into a seamless process that empowers the employee. By the same token, a real-time, responsive approach to identity ensures that employees lose their access to programs and confidential data as soon as they leave an organisation, reducing the probability that a disgruntled ex-staff member will cause a future breach. 

Creating seamless digital citizens 

These days, users demand government services more quickly. They’re also less willing to traipse through red tape and bureaucracy. But how do government organisations balance this transition to customer-centric services and method such as biometric and global authentication with the public’s fear that their data is unsafe? The introduction of My Health Record, a scheme that sees healthcare professionals match the identities of digital citizens with data on their drug allergies and medical history — one that’s only been taken up by 20 percent of Australians according to a July 2018 article in The Sydney Morning Herald — is a case in point. 

The Internet of Things — identity’s newest frontier? 

In the future, identity and access management won’t just apply to people. From driverless trucks operated by multinational mining companies to drones owned by the military and GPS units that help us navigate, the process of managing digital identities will increasingly encompass things as well. Over the next few years, businesses will need to invest in agile systems and platforms that correctly identify and grant the access privileges to a growing universe of connected objects. This new IoT ecosystem will call for a centralised approach to authorising and de-authorising data and the ability to segregate user roles and privileges across different scenarios and environments.