Data Is the Foundation of Identity Security

We make up to 35,000 choices — each day — according to various sources. These could be simple, like "Do I have time to stop for coffee on the way to the office?" To major decisions like: "Should I change careers?"

To make these decisions at each turn in your day, you use data. You didn't sleep well last night (data point No. 1). Your day is stacked with meetings (data point No. 2), and you need to be on your game (data point No. 3). So you make the choice to stop for coffee on your ride in. These are choices, informed by data.

In the enterprise and security realm, data informs the questions you face every day, and your responses require decisive action. These can run the gauntlet from business-level questions — such as "Are we going to hit our numbers this quarter?" —  to enterprise security questions, including "Do we have the right controls in place if an employee's identity credentials are compromised?"

Do you have access to the data you need to properly address these questions at a moment's notice? Because that's how quickly you need to react to these situations, with data as your force multiplier.

Data Informs the Context of Every Decision

Without comprehensive data and context, there's no way to keep up with the looming identity-related threats targeting your business. No way to make informed decisions about who or what should or shouldn't have access. You can't protect your enterprise without the identity data that is the contextual thread across your digital ecosystem.

Here's why: The vast majority of cyberattacks come down to just one … One breached identity. One compromised set of credentials. One breached access point or abused entitlement. Every single one of the hundreds and thousands of identities with access to your data represents risk. If you zoom out and think about all the ways your identity population interacts with applications, data, or cloud infrastructure, suddenly every aspect of your digital landscape feels vulnerable — because it is. For this reason, identity security is core to enterprise security and essential to your cyber strategy.

There's no arguing the relevance of firewalls, endpoint security, and network security to enterprise security today. But without identity security as your enterprise security foundation, you may as well have nothing, even if you lock down all those points of entry into the business. Because most threats come down to a breached identity, it doesn't matter what you've shut down: That identity is compromised. It's already inside your business. And if you don't have the right identity data and context to see and understand that, well, the damage is done. That identity is masquerading around as a legitimate identity, stealing data, downloading files, and exposing your business in countless ways.

That's why you have to start from within, taking an inside-out approach with identity as the foundation for building the rest of your enterprise security. That foundation has to center on identity data to be successful.

The Power of Identity Data and AI

Until recently, identity data has been undervalued in enterprise security. But think about it: Identity data is essentially a collection of information that uniquely identifies an individual or a machine and their entitlements, context, and actionable behavior. This data — about your identities, their characteristics, their roles, and their activity as they roam your digital infrastructure — are all crucial to making informed decisions about who or what should or shouldn't have access; how deep their access goes within business-critical apps, infrastructure, and all the data that lives there; and what security policy should be applied and when.

It's impossible to make even one of these decisions without putting data and context into every identity that spans your enterprise. Getting the context to make the right informed decisions is crucial to helping you stay ahead of threats. It's how you reduce the "blast radius" when the inevitable breach happens. It's how you protect your enterprise from the constellation of identity-centric threats surrounding your business.

And this is where AI comes in, but AI is only as good as the data it ingests. The power of AI coupled with the right depth of identity data cannot be overstated in tackling the volume and velocity of change happening across today's identity landscape.

Where do we go from here? It's time to flip the script in enterprise security. It's time to look inside out, not outside in. It's time to harness the power of identity data and AI. It's time to put the right security foundation in place, one capable of handling the complexities of today's threat landscape in our hyperconnected world. Identity must become the core of your enterprise security strategy. Fortunately, this is possible with data and AI fueling your identity security program.

By Matt Mills, President, SailPoint

About the Author

As SailPoint’s President, Matt Mills brings over 30 years of experience in enterprise software and selling complex solutions, as well as a proven track record of leading high-growth sales organizations.

He previously served as CEO of MapR, where he repositioned the company as an enterprise-class converged data platform, building out the sales team to keep pace with company growth. Prior to that, he spent 15 years at Oracle leading two divisions within the company's North American sales organization.