Oftentimes, identity and access management (IAM) can be viewed as simply an administrative tool, an audit tool or a check box within an organization. At the Gartner Identity & Access Management Summit in London, IBM plans on changing that viewpoint.

In the current environment of insider threats, inadvertent actors and malicious outsiders, it is more important than ever to understand who your users are and what they have access to. Not knowing the answers to these questions could have serious security implications and, more importantly, business implications.

The Importance of Understanding Access

Who has access to emissions testing information? Who has access to fantasy football lineup information? Who has access to a politician’s email server? Each of these may not seem critically important, but knowing this information can be the difference between a lawsuit, a security breach, stolen information, money loss or a typical no-news day within the organization.

Consider when a bank accepts money, pays out money, transfers money or moves it in any way. The bank knows exactly who has access, when/where they interacted with the money and what exactly they are allowed to do once they have that access.

Data, in many cases, may be even more valuable than money, yet we treat it differently. Patient information, customer financial information, secret recipes, algorithms and any other crown jewels must be protected at all costs, and therefore, it is critical to understand who has access and what they can do once they have that access.

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Gartner and IBM Spread Intelligence

If it is so critical to secure the organization with IAM, then how do we do it? Major themes IBM will be presenting and discussing at the upcoming summit include the insider threat, identity and access management in the cloud, identity governance and intelligence and access management.

These themes will be discussed at a session titled “Why Identity Must Be Your First Security Control,” presented by IBM’s Jason Keenaghan, program director for IAM Offering Management. Most data breaches begin with bad actors stealing legitimate user credentials. By locking down user identities, you can protect your organization against stolen credentials and the insider threat. Attendees of this session will learn how IBM’s approach to IAM can make the organization more secure.

The Gartner IAM Summit in London is always an excellent event with a wide variety of customers, vendors and business partners present. If you are interested in learning about the key trends in identity and access management, hearing from your peers or telling your IAM story, I highly recommend attending the event. Don’t forget to stop by the IBM session and booth.

Since we are in the U.K. and IBM is a major Wimbledon sponsor — we even collect and analyze match data — we will have an interactive Wimbledon game where participants can win prizes. We look forward to seeing you there!