At the Helm: A New Year and a Fresh Look at Identity Compliance

A new year always brings hope and enthusiasm with the idea that we're somehow working with a clean slate. We're inspired to drop a bad habit, modify some existing circumstances and start new projects – something good for ourselves. In the spirit of the New Year, I wanted to outline a few thoughts on what customers might want to change, do differently, or start doing in the area of identity audit and compliance for 2008.

Save money and invest in your future

Cost-cutting continues to be a high priority for most large organizations. CIOs are looking for ways to streamline, gain efficiencies and reduce the amount of time spent on redundant tasks and processes.

Unfortunately, for many the initial rush to comply with regulatory mandates resulted in the adoption of piecemeal and labor-intensive compliance processes. Many organizations adopted manual compliance processes with little or no real automation (e-mail systems, spreadsheets, homegrown scripts). Without automation, they are dependent upon people to implement controls, remediate changes, and demonstrate proof of compliance – a far less reliable approach that perpetuates ever-increasing costs and burden on IT staff. Companies should resolve to automate more compliance processes to shape up during 2008.

Think long-term fitness, not fad diet

One of the most common mistakes made by organizations under pressure to meet regulatory requirements is to treat compliance as a one-time event to pass an audit. Compliance efforts can be severely undermined by using a short-term project focus to address long-term, continuous business requirements. This causes many organizations to miss the strategic objectives of compliance: the need to strengthen internal controls and ensure the integrity of the business on an ongoing basis.

SailPoint Compliance IQ™ provides a scalable, sustainable process for effectively responding to compliance requirements now and in the future.

Resolve to change your reactive approach to compliance demands and get ahead of the curve. Use identity risk management to keep you a step ahead of breaches and violations.

Learn a new skill

A lot of experts are talking about risk management – but most organizations struggle to put a risk-based approach into practice. They want to be able to focus their compliance efforts on the areas of highest business risk. To do this, however, organizations must adopt a new way of thinking and a new discipline. By weaving risk management into identity compliance – from certifying access rights to enforcing policy to managing roles – an organization can better prioritize the risks facing the business and take the appropriate steps to reduce, avoid, or mitigate those risks.

Resolve to incorporate risk management into your identity strategy. Listen to a 40-minute webinar that explains how identity risk management can help you to pinpoint which users, departments or areas within the organization are the highest risks for non-compliance or security threats.

Finally, resolve to talk back. I want to hear from you. If you're making some of your own New Year's resolutions, please send them my way!

Happy New Year,
Mark McClain