Who will be ‘first’ to solve the identity problem?
Changing the conversation from technology to problem solving
19 November, 2015
category: Corporate, Digital ID
This is what lands in my inbox: “Our ID management solution redefines the IAM landscape providing the industry’s first fully-automated approach to securing network resources via unique customer defined data sets.” What exactly does this mean?
This is what I need: “Our identity and access management solution helps enterprises onboard new employees and securely provision access to facilities and networks. Company X has deployed the system and it’s helped secure network access, reduced the time it takes employees to access resources and consolidated multiple disparate credentials to one.”
Press releases, white papers and other materials from vendors in the identity market need to focus on the problems that these technologies can solve. Stop writing about how technology is “first,” “fastest,” or “industry-leading” and tell me what it can do.
Identity companies are spending a lot of money to try and sell their systems to enterprises but if you look at the state of cybersecurity it wouldn’t seem that it’s going very well.
A big reason for this gap is that identity is a tough sell. When trying to get funding from the C Level it’s easy to explain what a firewall does and how an intrusion detection system can help a company. But funding for an identity and access management system is harder to explain and thus placed lower on the list.
Identity companies need to change they way they communicate about their products. Too often the conversation revolves around technology and not the problems it can solve. Yes, technology enables these systems to work but that’s not enough. Unless vendor’s start talking about identity in terms of solving problems that enterprises have it will continue to be a tough sell.
“Our solution can enroll a new employee into an identity and access management system by scanning their driver license or passport. With some clicks on a screen that employee can be provisioned access to necessary networks, apps and physical locations along with strong authentication token of the enterprise’s choosing.” This helps a company understand what an identity and access management system can do.
Cybersecurity is a complex puzzle that won’t be solved with one piece. Identity and access management is an integral piece of that puzzle. Identity vendors need to start better communicating so organizations understand what the systems actually do and can get required funding to solve the problems that plague enterprises.