In my last blog post, I discussed the importance of identity governance today as ‘business essential.’ In the last few months, this has become abundantly clear for companies of all sizes, across all industries, and all over the world. The quick pivot to a virtual workforce that many companies experienced in light of the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates how and why identity is not only a business enabler but also a business accelerator.
Let me share a few recent real-world customer examples to illustrate the point (rather than just taking my word for it):
- This investment advisory business and longtime SailPoint customer needed to ensure workforce continuity while quickly shifting to a mostly remote workforce. In their words: “We tripled our user accounts and provisioning over the past few weeks, and SailPoint worked beautifully. During this time, we had to respond quickly to the unusually high systems integration, and SailPoint handled three times our normal workload. We are grateful that this is one less thing we have to worry about during the pandemic.” This is a powerful example of automation in identity, helping businesses quickly react, no matter what external or environmental changes come their way.
- In another instance, we helped a large retail organization and longtime customer to shift all of their retail location meetings to virtual meetings in 6 days thanks to the automation they had built into their SailPoint identity program. This enabled them to swiftly and securely deploy video conferencing across the business for 10,000 users. Identity, particularly when aided by AI and ML technologies, helps enterprises adapt quickly and at scale.
- As a third example, one of our large insurance customers quickly pivoted from a 20% virtual workforce to nearly 100% virtual workforce. With the help of SailPoint’s identity platform, they offloaded a significant amount of work around access request needs during their shift to virtual. In their words, “this was one less headache to worry about during COVID. The speed of now granting access is a win.” To state the obvious, no business can afford to waste a single second today. This has become a universal truth, particularly when the digital transformation has become a race to the finish line. This is a significant area where identity proves its value time and again in terms of keeping the business moving efficiently and securely.
- And we’ve heard similar stories from many of our other customers who all agree that our identity platform is showcasing its’ value during this time. There continues to be a huge demand for remote apps now that so many customers are operating in a remote workforce environment. So it’s exciting to hear how our SaaS identity platform has been able to successfully handle the increase in demand and keep their identity programs running without skipping a beat.
While these are just a few examples among many, they each illustrate the point clearly: identity governance is essential to businesses today, both during these challenging times and otherwise.
The key is this: put identity at the center of all that you do from a security and enablement perspective. You will have a strong foundation that will power your business by ensuring that every person can only access what they need and be kept out of what they don’t. Think about this way, without access, your workers would stop working, and business would stop in its tracks. With the right access, your workers stay productive, your infrastructure remains secure, and your business operations are kept within compliance guardrails.
Identity governance is so much more than merely opening the door for your users. Identity governance also gives you the intelligence needed to make smart, efficient, and secure identity decisions – not just who can have access, but who should have access and why. And especially during challenging times such as these, having clear answers to those questions has never been more critical.