Positive Perspective for Challenging Times

By Jackie Gilbert VP Marketing & Founder

These days, it seems like you can't turn around without reading an article about the global economic crisis. I've seen a variety of predictions about the economic downturn's impact on corporate IT spending – ranging from minor slow-downs to more dramatic budget slashing. We may all be in for a bumpy ride next year, but as the holiday season approaches, I'd like to offer some positive perspectives that may help you better manage the economy's impact on you and your organization.

Fight Recession with Technology

Technology remains one of your most powerful tools for increasing operational efficiency and making your employees more productive. In the area of identity governance, the initial rush to comply with regulatory mandates caused many companies to adopt tactical, labor-intensive governance or compliance processes. I've seen numerous examples of how manual or homegrown processes (e-mail systems, spreadsheets, custom scripts) are costing companies millions of dollars annually.

Look for ways to upgrade your approach with strategic identity governance. By automating processes like access certifications and SOD policy enforcement, you can cut costs and improve reliability and predictability – a big win in a tough year.

Prepare for Organizational Churn

From a user lifecycle management perspective, 2009 will bring turbulent times, with lots of workforce churn. Mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, and downsizing have become weekly occurrences, putting pressure on IT and business groups to manage the large-scale migrations or terminations of users in compressed timeframes. The right identity governance solution can help you automate and simplify large-scale workforce changes while meeting security and compliance goals.

During an acquisition, for example, identity governance tools can be used to quickly assess the compliance status of an acquired company's identity and access management processes. Once the assessment is complete, the same tools can automate the secure migration and management of new users as they are integrated into the acquiring company.

Proactively Manage Your Risks

Without a doubt, the recessionary economy increases your organizational risk. Layoffs, mergers and acquisitions, and bankruptcies create financial and emotional stresses for workers at home and on the job. Unfortunately, these forces increase the likelihood of fraud, sabotage, and corporate espionage. During periods of high stress and uncertainty, it becomes even more critical for organizations to proactively manage the risk associated with access to sensitive applications and data.

Identity governance solutions play a critical role in helping organizations to identify and assess identity management risks and take the necessary steps to reduce those risks with highly targeted controls. For example, you can designate terminated or transferring workers as “higher risk” populations. As a result, you can limit their access, require additional management approval of access privileges, or you may choose to monitor user activity for certain applications. The key is to proactively identify, eliminate, or mitigate known risks.

Renew, Refocus, and Lower Your Risk!

As tough as it may get next year, those of us focused on identity management have a real opportunity in front of us. We can offer significant improvements to our organizations, addressing a range of security, compliance, and risk management challenges. And we can provide innovative ways to save our organizations money by working smarter and replacing inefficient processes with automated solutions.

This is not a time to abandon hope; it's a time for getting smarter. 2009 will be a year of renewal, refocus and proactive change.

Wishing you and yours a happy holiday season and an even better 2009,
Jackie Gilbert