5 Key Identity and Access Management (IAM) Predictions to Watch in 2021 and Beyond!

By Veritis

5 Key IAM Predictions to Watch in 2021 and Beyond!

Amid the pandemic, the IT industry has witnessed a significant uptick in the remote workforce and customer-facing interactions on digital channels. Riding on the coattails is the proliferation of access points and digital user identities.

As a result, IT firms across the world are facing a widespread disruption in their Identity and Access Management (IAM) solutions. Cyber challenges are making IAM maintenance increasingly complex.

It has become a tough row to hoe for security leaders to facilitate secure, near-ubiquitous access to users. Many organizations lack the expertise to effectively define and manage user identities and access permissions.

Is your organization one of the above? It’s high time to improve your approaches to identity proofing and access management, for a stitch in time saves nine.

To help you achieve IAM resilience, we’ve shared some key IAM trends that we can expect to see in the decentralized identity world in 2021 and beyond:

5 Key Predictions for IAM Solutions

5 Key Predictions for Identity and Access Management

1) Cybersecurity Mesh Supports Over Half of IAM Requests

The traditional network perimeter security is no longer functional as much of the workforce is working from home. With the seismic shift to remote working, most digital assets and devices are outside the office premises, and so are most identities.

By 2025, over 50% of the IAM requests will be supported by the mesh model of cybersecurity. The reliance on the cybersecurity mesh model enables organizations to embrace a more holistic, mobile, resilient, and unified access management model.

In addition, it provides a more scalable, reliable, and flexible approach to digital asset access control.

A mesh model of cybersecurity involves implementing smaller, individual security perimeters around each access point instead of establishing a single perimeter around all access points or devices. In other words, each access point’s security is effectively managed from a centralized point of authority.

2) High Reliance on Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs)

With the emergence of work from anywhere culture, organizations are struggling to plan, develop, and implement comprehensive IAM practices. Making things worse, many are lacking the skills and resources to weather the identity crisis.

As a result, organizations are partnering with Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) like Veritis for advice, guidance, and integration recommendations pertaining to IAM solutions. Veritis is an industry leader in offering best-of-breed IAM solutions in an integrated approach.

By 2023, MSSPS will drive around 40% of IAM application convergence, shifting the reliance from product vendors to service partners.

3) Demand for Identity Proofing Tools

In the pre-pandemic era, the enrollment and recovery procedures organizations incorporated for multi-factor authentication are feeble affirmation methods, such as email addresses and phone numbers. As a result, organizations never realized higher-trust corroboration.

However, with the increase in digital identities amid the pandemic, more robust enrollment and recovery procedures have become the need of the hour. Identity proofing tools will quench the thirst.

By 2024, around 30% of large enterprises will deploy identity proofing tools to wick away common weaknesses in workforce identity lifecycle processes.

4) Emergence of Decentralized Identity

With the sudden uptick in the remote workforce, the present-day centralized approaches to managing identity data have become ineffective in offering benefits in three key areas: Privacy, Assurance, and Pseudonymity.

A decentralized identity approach leverages blockchain technology to ensure utmost privacy. It enables the organizations to validate access requests and facilitate users with only the absolute minimum access.

By 2024, a portable, decentralized identity approach is poised to emerge in the IAM market to address identity-invisible use cases.

5) Demographics Bias in Identity Proofing to Tail Off

A study led by researchers Timnit Gebru and Joy Buolamwini in 2018 found that facial recognition systems performed much worse at identifying the gender of women and people of color than at classifying men and white people.

Concerns over possible bias in face recognition processes have since then gained attention significantly. It also led to implications concerning user experience, reputation damage, and legal liability.

Consequently, by 2022, around 95% of organizations will ask identity-proofing vendors to prove that they are abating demographics bias, a drastic rise from 15% today.

Final Thoughts

IAM Solution Implementation

Time will tell what 2021 holds. But the new normal of remote working and the emergence of hybrid workforce signal significant changes for identity and access management. Each of the aforementioned trends highlights an opportunity to hammer out a robust IAM strategy. Enterprises that consider these and take the required strides will steer clear of the digital identity crisis.

However, it is most likely that you may run roughshod over the end-user experience, as IAM challenges are becoming increasingly difficult. An external IAM service provider like Veritis can help you implement IAM solutions that align with your current needs and future changes.

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