Audit, compliance, and governance solutions are growing at a rapid pace as part of the Identity Access Management (IAM) market, which is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of over 17% by 2024, according to a report by Grandview Research.

The growing concern among organizations regarding data thefts of critical customer information is a major factor contributing to the market growth.

In 2017, the global identity access management (IAM) market size was valued at USD 8.85 billion. It is expected to experience a CAGR of 12.7% from 2018 to 2025. Increasing spending by government organizations and large-scale enterprises owing to security concerns as well as stringent regulatory compliances are anticipated to boost market growth.

It is not just the well-covered GDPR implementations which impact companies, not only in Europe, but around the world, as those regulations apply to any company doing business in the EU, but the ongoing evolution of legislation making the Dodd-Frank Act, Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), Sarbanes-Oxley Act and others more complex to manage.

For companies in regulated industries, this is all about risk mitigation, including policy-based compliance and audit management, automated in order to scale and control the cost of oversight and governance.

Mega growth trends including Bring Your Own Devices (BYOD), Internet of Things (IoT), and mobility and remote workforce continue to stimulate demand for IAM solutions, and for Privileged Access Management (PAM).

Access management solutions are expanding into risk-based programs with competencies focused on the selection of software solutions, implementation of logical access control, and ongoing entitlement management. While enterprises are benefitting from these programs, they are also starting to realize there are often hidden costs associated with many solutions, which require premise-based equipment, layered licensing fees, long implementation times (often taking years to design and install), and in general a lack of agility required as IT moves more applications into the cloud and adopts virtualized network services.

Over the years, access management has become an important part of individual enterprise environments, and increasingly as part of Managed Services Providers (MSPs) offerings.

When solutions are modern and cloud-native, planned and implemented well, regulatory compliance can be dramatically improved, with more security features addressing the risk of external and internal attacks (with internal attacks estimated to make up nearly 50% of breaches over the last few years).

One upside to the right solutions is improvement to overall efficiency of IT and OT staff, as solid access management requires a full understanding and instrumentation of network assets, endpoints, applications, and any system that can be modified by end-users, be they employees on smart phones using multifactor authentication to access resources, or system admins with privileged accounts and credentials.

According to the Grandview Research report, “large enterprises are benefitting from cost saving associated with automated user provisioning as well as increased audit ability and compliance of their entire portfolio of SaaS applications such as Yammer, WebEx, Google Apps and Box.net.”

And while more than half of the revenue generated in the access management market has come from on-premise deployments, the firm says the increasing adoption of cloud models among different organizations based on the cloud’s cost-effectiveness and economies of scale is one of the key factors contributing to the growth of the segment. “Cloud-based IAM services and products provide various benefits such as simplified management and reduced costs, with no software or hardware deployment,” the report also says.

Growth in governance solutions is being driven beyond GDPR in Europe; stronger legislation in the U.S. is happening at the state, local, and federal level.

For example, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, in 2017, around 240 bills related to cybersecurity were introduced by 42 states in the U.S. to address cyber security issues.

State and local initiatives include combating threats to critical infrastructure, providing more funding for security, and enforcing regulations to implement specific types of security practices in the private and public sector.

The Federal Government in the US is also investing and becoming more vocal about securing growth areas, including the Internet of Things (IoT), and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). The Federal Communications Commission, for example, continues to crack down on the certification of connected devices, and to issue warnings about the consequences of not securing devices given the rising number of attacks.

Practicing what they preach, federal agencies in the U.S. have themselves incorporated strong authentication requirements, including hardware-based personal identification verification cards for employees for accessing government IT infrastructure and networks.

From healthcare organizations to financial institutions, from technology companies to government agencies, risk management, quality compliance, and the ability to audit how networks, systems, and data are protected is paramount to success and can lead to more efficient business operations.

Organizations can strategically reduce costs with the right platforms and solutions, while also reducing the risk of reputational damage and hefty fines in place to protect consumers and citizens from cyber criminals, who themselves are spending billions to attempt to control, manipulate, and hold hostage the very backbone of our most essential systems, including critical infrastructure, in our hyper-connected world.

Author: Shrey Fadia