One thing is clear: data breaches are costing businesses more than ever, yet many organizations still don’t have the proper systems in place to prevent them. While breaches are getting sophisticated, organizations are still struggling to figure out what went wrong with the last breach!

The global average cost of a single data breach in 2022 is $4.35 million. The United States is the costliest country in the world to experience a data breach, coming in at $9.44 million, followed by the Middle East and Canada, reporting $7.46 million and $5.64 million, respectively. What’s even more staggering than these financial numbers is that 83 percent of organizations that have experienced a breach have gone on to report more than one. 

A significant contributing factor to these repeated breaches is that many organizations lack a single, unified Identity Orchestration (IO) technology to effectively tie different systems together for a seamless, proactive threat identification approach. Converged IO technology ensures controls are properly applied to the most important assets and data while providing visibility and detecting gaps and remediation across varied systems. The ability to have broad and deep visibility could be a game changer as a proactive strategy could be built to protect from the most modern breach tactics.

Many more businesses are incredibly vulnerable to data breaches, even with robust security solutions in place, due to gaps in how these systems interact. These security gaps come about when processes between tools are not well-defined, and silos are created, preventing departments from cohesively working towards the same cybersecurity goals.

A calling card for threat actors

The smallest mistake can offer cybercriminals a pathway inside your organization, even when you think the doors to your data are well-guarded.

There have been recent breaches within organizations where Privileged Access Management (PAM) and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) systems were already implemented. This means that these organizations had some of the proper tools, but because they didn’t have the right converged infrastructure to detect multiple MFA failures or that someone accessed their PAM system to get privileged identities, the breach occurred unnoticed.

In some specific scenarios, a custom home-grown IO solution could be built by your own development teams. But in many cases, this leaves room for unforeseen gaps in security to arise. A better solution would be to utilize technology tested across multiple industries with a proven track record of proactively addressing and resolving issues.

Weaving your identity fabric together

Think of Identity Orchestration as the conductor of your cybersecurity orchestra — bringing your vision and direction to life. It sets the tempo, executes the meter, and shapes the sound of the ensemble to achieve the proper interpretation and cadence. Orchestrating these elements is necessary to accurately translate the composer’s intent, and without it, the experience is a disaster waiting to happen. This is the role of converged IO technology in your cybersecurity system.

Identity orchestration technology needs to be able to speak to multiple security protocols in different systems, which means being able to communicate with cloud-based and on-premise solutions simultaneously. The languages these applications speak can be vastly different, but reliable orchestration technology needs to be able to speak those different languages, allowing it to integrate and provide one cohesive view. By helping to move customers from old to new systems, this creates a gradual migration path.

As businesses grow, merge, and transition more applications to the cloud, rapid integrations of these applications with identity systems are imperative. IO can help to unify multiple single-function security products and access management solutions, providing a holistic view and control of users, data, applications and systems.

Proactive threat identification

Another way that you can protect the integrity of your organization’s identity data is to establish a dedicated managed services team to ensure your systems are running properly without disrupting too much of your day-to-day business operations. Managed services have been focused on general IT infrastructure and network security in the past but are now needing to shift more into the identity realm.

With people accessing data and applications from multiple locations and new devices, each of these access points to your business data are now driven by identity verification at their core. A strong managed services team will focus on a variety of core security functions, including access management, governance, and identity management, allowing the rest of your internal team to focus on their area of expertise without getting bogged down.

IO technology can facilitate proactive threat identification and resolution by pulling in configurations and analytics from all identity systems so access logs can be viewed. This allows the owner to better visualize how applications are performing against business objectives and measure ROI.

In today’s world, converged IO technology is more important than ever. There is no better time than the present to invest in your cybersecurity systems, as many companies are passing along the cost of data breaches to their customers. Being proactive and taking the necessary steps to protect your company’s data now will save you and your customers from future headaches.