Insights & Takeaways from the Gartner Identity & Access Management Summit 2019 (London, UK)

Last week, security and IT leaders gathered in London from across the globe for the Gartner Identity and Access Management (IAM) Summit to learn how to deliver successful IAM programs and to explore cutting-edge IT solutions from top providers. BeyondTrust enjoyed the privilege of being a premier sponsor, as well as participating in fostering conversations around IAM best practices, privileged access management (PAM), GDPR and privacy, and emerging cyber trends.

In this blog, I’ll provide a brief recap of some of the key insights and hot topics at the event.

Prioritizing PAM to Bolster Cyber Defenses

In recent years, the IT world has become more mobile, cloud-based, and decentralized. We’ve also seen new technology stacks emerge, and the push towards DevOps and other modern initiatives that have rapidly taken hold and changed the way teams and organizations operate. Each of these trends has helped drive the creation of a massively expanded privileged threat surface. So, it was no surprise that privileged access management dominated the summit.

As Homan Farahmand, Sr Director Analyst, Gartner, noted in a session, privileged access is a main attack vector for cybercriminals. According to Farahmand, when dissecting high-profile cyberattacks, businesses routinely found that the “the root cause was actually privileged credentials, either taken over by malware or rogue users.” This realization has served as an impetus for enterprises to go beyond treating PAM simply as a compliance requirement, but as a key security technology to be applied with “methodical discipline” to prevent and mitigate cyber threats.

One core focus area at Gartner IAM was emerging use cases for IAM and PAM. Managing privileged and non-privileged identities in the cloud, and the security implications of containerization were both hot topics. Farahmand also discussed the implications robotic process automation and IoT will have on the way organizations architect their PAM tools for cyber defense in the future.

5 Core Security Practices to Reduce Cyber Risk & Improve Compliance Posture

BeyondTrust’s Brian Chappell, Senior Director, Enterprise & Solutions Architecture, also took the stage at Gartner IAM to discuss five impactful security practices that have the potential to dramatically reduce an organization’s security and compliance risk. Brian explored how a crowded security vendor marketplace contributes to information overload that impacts cybersecurity strategies, rendering IT teams flat-footed and too reactive. Then, he offered provided best practices organizations can apply to simplify their security model to, not only better dial in security controls, but also to ensure end users are enabled and empowered.

6 Key Takeaways on PAM at Gartner IAM

PAM advice echoed throughout the show sessions, from analysts and exhibitors alike. Here are 6 key pieces of advice from Gartner IAM on how to go about reducing the risk of privileged threats:

• Prioritize privileged access security controls across the organization
• Establish ownership and accountability for privileged access
• Implement least privilege across all types of endpoints
• Harden privileged access on network devices
• Discover and expand PAM controls to virtual and cloud environments
• Emphasize a holistic approach to privilege analytics

The PAM Vendor Landscape and Market

Gartner’s IAM Magic Quadrants and Critical Capabilities keynote presentation provided visitors with incisive, research-driven analysis of the major vendors of the broader access management marketplace.

We’re extremely proud that BeyondTrust was named a leader in the Magic Quadrant for Privileged Access Management. It was fantastic to hear Felix Gaehtgens, Sr Director Analyst, Gartner, affirm that BeyondTrust is facing its competition head-on, has a “big arsenal of different PAM tools”, and that its offering is “very, very powerful”.

Final Thoughts

This year’s Gartner IAM Summit again provided a tremendous opportunity for attendees to gain actionable insights around addressing identity and access-based challenges, while fostering powerful discussions to help move security best practices forward.

With Gartner predicting that, by year-end 2019, 20% (up from less than 5% today) of organizations will meet the majority of their user authentication needs using access management tools rather than standalone tools, it will be interesting to see how this event evolves in forthcoming years. We hope to see you there!

Learn more about BeyondTrust’s world-leading privileged access management platform.