New study reveals identity sprawl plagues organisations

Radiant Logic, the enterprise identity data fabric company, has unveiled its 'Identity Data Management: Roadblock or Business Enabler' report, providing deep insights into today’s identity management challenges, at the Gartner Identity and Access Management (IAM) Summit. Gartner Peer Insights and Radiant Logic surveyed global IT and information security leaders to understand how organisations are addressing identity sprawl and its resulting identity management challenges. 

Identity sprawl is the rapid growth of enterprise identity silos, and the explosion of user information, attributes, and credentials that accompanies it. This acceleration results in greater security and compliance risks, as identity information spreads across a complex web of legacy, hybrid, and multi-cloud systems. The lack of visibility and control across all these systems creates the opportunity for identity-driven cyber-attacks—offering more opportunities for misuse or negligence by individuals (employees, former employees, contractors, partners) and opening the door for cybercriminals to take advantage and move laterally throughout an organisation. 

The report found that an alarming 67% of respondents know they have identity sprawl, but don’t know how to fully address it. And although 58% rated identity management of vital importance, 61% stated that their business views identity management as too time-intensive and costly to manage effectively on an ongoing basis. Respondents reported the most common negative impacts as increased technical debt (66%) and negative productivity and morale (64%) among employees. 

Wade Ellery, Field Chief Technology Officer at Radiant Logic says: “Managing identities is a growing concern for companies and as the number of identities continue to grow, identity has become more of a roadblock than a business enabler.

“However, companies are making progress with over 70% of organisations reporting that they have a designated team to specifically manage identities. Together with executive support and having access to and visibility into the ‘right’ data, identity can move from a hindrance to an asset for global organisations.”  

Additional research findings include: 

Disparate identities are causing an increase in identity-related breaches as IT leaders struggle to address sprawl. 

• Consistent with recent industry research, 84% of organisations reported an identity-related breach and 67% experienced one in the last year. 
• 60% of organisations stated they have over 21 disparate identities per user, with 34% reporting 21-30 disparate identities. 
• 28% of organisations reported making business decisions with limited visibility. 

IT leaders face continued employee frustration and productivity challenges, yet they must contend with on-going budget constraints.  

• 71% of those surveyed don’t have a budget allocated to identity-based projects, while 35% are concerned that they won’t be able to protect their organisation from identity-based security threats. 
• 85% of those surveyed are concerned about users logging into personal applications with work credentials and have had minimal success preventing it. 
• 71% report that the most common user complaint from managing identity is poor integration with new tools and applications and getting help for these issues requires time and resources from support.