ID and access management takes hold

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Over 50 per cent of large organisations were using software tools to manage passwords for shared accounts in 2007, according to analyst Gartner today.

This makes the market shared-account password management (SAPM) software one of the fastest growing areas of the identity and access management (IAM) market, the researcher said.

As a result, it also predicted that more than half of large organisations will use these SAPM tools by the end of 2010, with growth driven largely by compliance with regulations that increasingly demand proof of personal accountability, like the payment card industry data security standard (PCI DSS).

Ant Allan, research vice president at Gartner, said that two or three years ago only larger financial services companies were adopting software products to organise data security and access.

“However, compliance has further driven growth across a variety of vertical industries and sizes of organisations. SAPM tools can minimise the risks associated with the use of shared accounts, improve regulatory compliance, and reduce operational costs,” he said.

The analyst is estimating that around half of organisations using SAPM tools have 5,000 employees or more, where around two thirds are based in North America and a quarter is based in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). But banking and other financial services still made up one fifth of adopting organisations by industry.

Allan added that such tools are increasingly being used for best-practice management of security and operational risks associated with application-to-application (A2A) and application-to-database (A2DB) access.

But he warned potential adopters: “Implementation may require an organisation to change every calling application which could create a significant bottleneck to roll out.”

Gartner recommended that organisations use a SAPM tool to automate processes and enforce controls for shared ‘super-user’ or ‘firecall’ accounts that provide higher than normal privileges for emergency password or encryption key access outside normal working hours.

“Organisations considering using SAPM tools to manage passwords for software accounts need to do so as part of a broader application security strategy,” added Allan.

Gartner made its predictions in advance of its Identity & Access Management Summit taking place next week in London.

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