New ESG & JumpCloud Study Uncovers IT’s Biggest Identity and Security Challenges Due to COVID-19

Global shift to remote work and rise of mixed platform use increases complexity of securely managing identity, access, and devices

A new ESG Research Survey sponsored by JumpCloud, “Trends in IAM: Cloud-driven Identities”, shows that 97% of organizations plan to expand, or continue existing spending levels on identity and access management (IAM), a market forecasted to reach $13B in 2021. The spike in spending is driven by the rise of remote work and growing complexity of securely managing multiple types of end user devices, applications, storage systems, and networks. IT teams are struggling with the plethora of piecemeal extensions required to secure and manage user identities across every needed resource. The new study underscores the need to simplify identity, access, and device management through consolidation of disparate security tools.

“Organizations of all sizes are converging their IAM strategy to better secure and connect their users, something that has been a challenge due to the number of tools these teams are having to manage,” said Doug Cahill, vice president and group director of cybersecurity at ESG. “The trend away from siloed approaches is only going to become more common.”

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ESG’s Cahill and JumpCloud’s co-founder Rajat Bhargava will be hosting a webinar on the study, “2021 State of IAM and Security: Opportunities and Threats” on Tuesday, October 13 at 8:00 am PT/11:00 am ET. The webinar will address security readiness for a remote work environment, including the biggest identity and access management challenges and security threats introduced by different levels of cloud services (SaaS, Iaas, PaaS).

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The JumpCloud-sponsored ESG survey found:

• Growing IAM spending: 97% of organizations plan to expand, or continue existing spending levels, on identity and access management (IAM). 77% are going to increase spending, while 20% plan to keep IAM spending at the same level.
• Vendor consolidation in IAM: Almost half (49%) of respondents said they plan to consolidate IAM controls, using fewer security vendors.
• Demand for new policies and technologies: 80% of respondents agree that a new set of IAM policies and technologies are needed to manage the access of cloud applications, existing applications, infrastructure, and DevOps tools.
• Biggest IAM challenges: When asked about the biggest IAM challenges created by cloud services, respondents said the three biggest challenges were 1) “maintaining security consistency across our own data center and public cloud environments” (33%); 2) “an increase in remote users as a result of the coronavirus pandemic requires access to a diverse range of applications” (32%); and 3) “the use of cloud applications to share data with external third parties increases risk” (24%).

“This new research validates JumpCloud’s approach of building a single, cloud based directory platform that lets IT securely manage identities, devices, and access from a single pane of glass,” said Bhargava. “In the past six months, more and more businesses have moved to JumpCloud to consolidate directories, SSO, and other key elements of IAM.”