New research from Forrester has found that over
three-quarters of enterprise IT security professionals in France,
Germany and the UK of the respondents feel that some aspect of
governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) is pushing them into
embracing
identity and access management (IAM) even though they have
issues regarding its purchase, implementation and
operation.
In ‘Identity And Access Management Adoption In Europe: 2008’,
the analyst firm found that
the top drivers of IAM were security and governance, and 78% of
the IT security professionals regarded IAM as important or very
important to their organisation in t he coming 12 months.
Forrester also found differences between how European
enterprises and their counterparts in the US and Canada regard IAM.
Regulatory compliance drives far more IAM adoption at North
American companies (24%), at the expense of improved service
delivery and security and governance concerns. Forrester suggests
that this is likely due to the historically greater regulatory
burden in Europe, where enterprises are more accustomed to dealing
with compliance issues.
European enterprises’ two main obstacles to adopting IAM were
the cost and complexity associated with buying, implementing, and
operating these products and solutions. Forrester’s analysts of
this is that it is a reflection of the fact that the broader
identity and access management space is still quite fragmented and
full of products that often don't work together very well.
About a quarter of the respondents indicated that they were
confident of reaching identity and access objectives without
dedicated IAM tools, and a similar number indicated not yet
recognising the business value of IAM. Forrester believes that some
in the latter category may not have been able to make the case for
IAM to the executives holding the purse strings.
Firms should just start their identity management initiatives to
build the case around improved governance, risk, and compliance,
and start with authentication advised Forrester.
“Both our online survey data and our conversations with clients
indicate that identity and access management in general is
gathering pace among European enterprises,” commented report author
Bill Nagel. “As the marketplace is fragmented and disjointed,
adoption is naturally occurring in fits and starts, with
technologies that address more obvious top-of-mind issues finding
the greatest traction to date.”