17 Dec 2020
October’s National Cybersecurity Awareness Month gave us all a lot to consider in terms of the threats organizations are facing and how to best address them. Although the month of October is dedicated to being cybersmart, it truly is something organizations should be aware of every month of the year. Today, we will address the importance of securing your workforce whether they are remote or in an office setting in the future.
In a previous post, I discussed a hypothetical scenario involving a vice president of finance who was caught off guard by a phishing attack that compromised her privileged account credentials and provided the attacker the information needed to reach out to members of her team requesting company data and funds. Despite the fact that most employees feel they can spot a phishing email a mile away, statistics show that 37% of breaches stole or used credentials and 22% involved phishing. This post will focus in on a few customer scenarios and how Oracle Identity and Access Management (IAM) supports customers on-premises and in the cloud. We will also discuss some of the ways in which our highly skilled partners are helping customers maximize their IAM solutions to be flexible and user friendly.
This week, we had the opportunity to sit down with one of our partners to talk about how the changes we are seeing globally have impacted organizations looking to modernize their IAM solutions. I sat down for a conversation with Saurabh Sharma, Principal Managing Partner at Kapstone to talk about how the IAM landscape has evolved over the past couple of years and rapidly changed in 2020. When asked how organizations are meeting the needs of their remote workforce, Sharma explained, “Cloud has already obliterated the corporate security perimeter. Users access applications deployed everywhere from anywhere. In today’s remote workforce world, identity proofing, user onboarding, training, and risk driven adaptive access are critical to securely meet remote workforce access needs.”
Although this year has presented new challenges, organizations continue to operate and move forward with innovation during this new normal. Saurabh described his experience working with a customer who wanted to upgrade their Oracle IAM Suite to Oracle IAM 12c. Kapstone worked hand in hand with the customer team and leveraged it’s migration toolkit to migrate them to the new platform in a simplified manner. With Oracle IAM 12c, they are leveraging features like enhanced certification, simplified application onboarding, and support for the latest security protocols that help them be more secure and innovative year-round.
Implementing best practices and training employees is critical to success in the cloud and selecting technology partners that can help you fully realize the value of your IAM solution is key. Saurabh and I discussed the importance of meeting the identity needs both for new and existing customers. As organizations continue to evolve, it is important to understand the many reasons customers choose to upgrade, migrate, or select a new IAM solution. Sharma explained, “Every customer is at a unique point in their IAM journey– it could be cloud migration, compliance and regulatory requirements, or managed service needs. Oracle is a unique vendor that understands all aspects of security, whether it’s inherent cloud platform (OCI) security, data security, application security, or key IAM security functions. One of Oracle’s biggest strengths lies in its large portfolio of autonomous, cloud, and application technologies. Modern IAM systems need to integrate with cloud, on-premises applications, and various PaaS platforms.” In a highly competitive landscape, organizations need faster insights, better user experience, and quicker onboarding to be successful.
Saurabh went on to describe another Oracle and Kapstone customer who has seen the benefits of enhancing their Oracle Identity and Access Management to better protect against modern threats. Recently, a North American logistics services provider selected Oracle and Kapstone for an identity and access management modernization journey. The customer had a complex array of cloud as well as legacy on-premises applications. In less than five months, they have implemented single sign-on and identity integration across seven enterprise applications. They are now able to better manage identities, quickly onboard new users, and remove identities for short-term workers quickly to better defend against attacks.
Regardless of your current position in your IAM and overall cloud journey, the flexibility and functionality needed to cater to businesses in 2020 and beyond is ready and available. You can learn more by visiting our Oracle Identity and Access Management webpage and take a deeper look into how Kapstone can help your organization better defend itself against modern threats.