Overcoming the Lack of Security Personnel to Ensure a Winning IAM and IGA Program

I don’t spend a ton of time watching sports, but when Ido spectate, I gravitate to hockey. Hockey appeals to me for many reasons — the speed, the simplicity and most importantly the power play. Hockey is the only sport that I know of that penalizes a team guilty of a foul by removing a player from the game, giving a significant boost to the execution chances of the opposing team. This has always felt so urgent and true to life for me that I have often wondered why other sports don’t do something similar. Like almost everything in life, success depends greatly on the team behind the execution.

Identity Access Management (IAM) and Identity Governance+ Administration (IGA) programs are no different. I have seen countless projects go sideways because an organization simply could not field their project team with enough professionals skilled in both IAM and the particular solution they were trying to implement. This week, 451 Research Group and Clear Skye published an impact brief discussing the challenges faced in security staffing — particularly in IAM and IGA. The findings validate that my personal experience aligns with the market reality: Two-thirds of organizations identify a lack of enough skilled IAM professionals to meet their program goals. This means that 2/3’s of organizations are embarking on their IAM/IGA journey on the wrong side of a security power play, ensuring the odds are stacked against them from the beginning.

I am passionate about the many benefits that Clear Skye’s #ABetterWaytoIGA™ offers our customers and being on the right side of a skills power play is one of the quickest wins our approach offers. When an organization embarks on a new or refreshed IGA project, a best practice is to leverage an advisory partner who drives these programs every day. Typically, this team is comprised of project managers, IGA-to-business-process analysts, and skilled technical hands to build out the last mile on whatever software solution was selected. It’s the last group that is most difficult to staff, requiring not only IGA skills but also skills in SailPoint, Saviynt, Oracle, IBM, or other traditional IAM solution provider. These people are scarce enough to both pick and choose what they want to work on AND demand a high hourly rate, putting project timelines and budgets at great risk.

IGA programs that use Clear Skye IGA as their solution have a staffing advantage over the others based on our solution being native to the ServiceNow Now Platform

IGA programs that use Clear Skye IGA as their solution have a staffing advantage over the others based on our solution being native to the ServiceNow Now Platform. While we absolutely recommend leveraging an advisory partner for program and project guidance, the technical skills needed to buildout the solution’s last mile are not specific to us as a vendor but rather apply to everyone skilled on ServiceNow. This is a much larger (and less expensive) pool of resources to pull from with a much higher probability that they are already working within your organization. This not only helps ensure you meet your budget and timeline milestones, but also sets an organization up to own the long-term care and feeding of their IGA program.

I have seen many times in hockey that playing without the full team reduces the chance of a positive outcome. Clear Skye IGA is proud to remove this common obstacle between you and your IGA success.

That’s what I call an IGA Power Play.

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