3 Reasons to Implement an IAM System

What are the reasons to implement an IAM system? IAM (Identity and Access Management) software helps IT managers, system administrators, data protection officers (for GDPR) and internal auditors manage network accounts and permissions every day. What are three reasons why businesses, public entities and organizations should use this tool?

An IAM system improves the security of company data.

The first of the reasons to implement an IAM system is its contribution to system security by preventing hacker attacks and data breaches. This is its main use case.

To provide context: the number of data breach attempts grows every year. To provide context: the number of data breach attempts grows every year. Each successful one in 2021 cost an average of $4.24 million, showing an increase from $3.86 million in 2020. Additionally, 82% of attacks on company systems come from weak or stolen user passwords (Source: Verizon Data Breach Report). Attacks are carried out with the goal of obtaining the credentials of internal system users and exploiting them to access company data. This is why the first threat to the system is the users themselves: they have free access and without an access policy, they can do and see what they want, making them the main targets of hackers.

This is where an IAM software comes in. Its goal is to secure access and manage authorizations to various areas of the company network. In this way, the risk is greatly reduced in two ways: the credentials will always be secure, varied and updated according to cybersecurity guidelines and the users themselves will not have access to all areas. This will mitigate any damage and make life difficult for hackers who may gain access to the system but not to the data they are seeking.

An IAM system generates cost savings.

The impact on costs and ROI (Return On Investment) of IAM systems must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. You can be sure that the greater the number of users and applications in a company, the greater the financial return for the organization. This is because IAM software simplifies and automates the work of the IT department, reducing the number of low-value added work hours. The savings for the company comes from the reduction of these dedicated man-hours. Finally, the costs of sanctions that are at risk in case of a data breach should also be evaluated, but unfortunately these are never easy to evaluate.

An IAM system simplifies the work of the IT department

Let’s start with a fact: 70% of the requests to the IT department in the healthcare sector consists of requests for new access and credential recovery. Where an IAM system is not present, the work is done manually by people. The larger the company, the more these requests will occupy the workday of the operators. It’s not pleasant to do and redo the same thing every day hoping that something will change someday. Especially if there are tools to automate these activities.

The automation of provisioning, recovery and credential change provided by an IAM software significantly simplifies the work of the IT department, not to mention the psychological impact on their working life. They will be much less frustrated if they are not forced to always do the same low-value added activities.

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