In IT security, one of the broadest issues is identity and access management. From enabling employees to access the internal resources they need to fulfill business aims, to companies outsourcing functionality and hardware to consumers seeking to bank, trade or buy goods remotely, all are dependent on secure, reliable identity and access management.

Identity management increases the capability to have proper controls within a certain environment. Essentially, organizations have the ability of ensuring that only proper individuals have total access to resources in their particular field only and nothing beyond that. Identity management eliminates any security danger from the creation of accounts that do not have valid owners or using unapproved configurations.

Implementations can take a very long time to fully function, which can affect a firm’s efficiency. Sometimes there are even security holes. In identity and access management, it is a known fact that only 10 percent of authorized identities are covered and the other 90 percent fall into the category of privileged identities or M2M authorizations. Because the number is so high for uncovered identities, it leaves a business rather vulnerable to security compromises, and that can mean thousands of dollars lost in revenue every year.

An upcoming webinar will discuss these “gaping holes” when it comes to identity and access management. Charles Kolodgy, VP for Security Research at IDC (News - Alert) and Jonathan Lewis, director of Product Marketing at SSH Communications Security, will offer this 30-minute informational webinar that will discuss compliance exposures and how to determine the scope of the problem in an organization.

Getting your organization's governance processes locked in is a tall order, but well worth it. One of the many benefits of proper identity governance is that it pinpoints which identity-related processes are most in need of attention.

Registration for SSH’s upcoming webinar is now open and the event will be held on May 14 at 2:00 p.m. EDT.