Identity Security: Who Will Enterprises Adopt for the ‘Who’ of InfoSec? 

Introduction

In this article, we review a small portion of ETR's IAM Market Array and RSA Drill Down data and highlight that ITDMs increasingly view Identity as a critical priority in a rising threat environment and with a growing number of identities within a given enterprise stack. The full research note also examines the declining spending intention trends with CyberArk and Okta, despite their positions as best-of-breed vendors, while noting Microsoft’s growing Entra demand.

Key Takeaways

• Identity security received the highest percentage of citations as a top three security priority in our recent RSA Drill Down Survey

• Despite strong interest in the category, we have seen deteriorating spending intention data for two of the largest leading Identity platforms, CyberArk and Okta

• Like security at large, Identity continues to see product expansion, a platform approach, vendor consolidation, and interest from private equity firms

• Microsoft Entra (formerly Active Directory) is increasingly viewed as a core product in IAM stacks

The IAM Market is a High Demand Area

Our recent survey data and ETR Insights conversations point to Identity as a critical node of Information Security, a sector that has seen spending growth outpace overall IT growth. We believe this has been driven by several trends: an increasing threat environment, progress in digital transformations and cloud adoption in enterprises, an increasing number of identities and applications associated with each identity, and early adoption of AI/ML use cases.

We note several large, highly publicized security breaches in the past year, including the MGM Resorts hack, which was allegedly executed through stolen employee credentials and resulted in an estimated $100M loss to the company. The rise in identity-based attacks is more than anecdotal however, as Microsoft reported a tenfold increase year-over-year in password-based attacks during certain months last year. With such incidents in mind, it is no surprise that IT decision makers are prioritizing Identity protection. Our recent Cybersecurity Trends Drill Down survey found Identity as the highest priority in the next 12 months, with 45% of respondents ranking it as a top three choice.

In addition to our Cybersecurity trends surveys, ETR recently published an Observatory report and Market Array data set plotting Identity Access tools based wholly on end user and evaluator data tracking spending intent, usage growth, ROI expectations, stickiness and churn, as well as product strengths and weakness and more. You can read the Observatory Report for Identity and Access Mgmt. Tools here. One of the many insightful takeaways was that when evaluating these IAM tools, respondents ranked ‘Ease of Implementation / Integration / Compatibility with Tech Stack’ and ‘Ease of Use/ User Interface / Self-Service' as the top two important elements.

This is unsurprising when considering that a comprehensive Identity security strategy can involve dozens of application logins and multiple identities per enterprise user, which in turn require APIs and integration with hundreds of other software platforms. The scale and growth in total identities increases the complexity and demands on IT Security teams overseeing these platforms and products. The third most frequent response, ‘Security / Quality / Best in Class,’ also garnered over a quarter of respondents.

ETR also tracks hundreds of security companies in our syndicated surveys, providing competitive intelligence, market positioning, and spending intentions data. Two of those companies, Okta and CyberArk, are considered IAM leaders, and the full report (which you can access here covers both of them in great detail). For now, it suffices to say that ETR's data is uncovering concerning signs of potential growth decline in both vendors, more severely among CyberArk users. The full report also delves deeply into the impact that private equity is having on the IAM market, as well as the ubiquitous presence of Microsoft and its Entra product.

This report and the vast breadth of underlying data that support it should not be missed. Subscribers can access them on our consolidated research platform.

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Enterprise Technology Research (ETR) is a technology market research firm that leverages proprietary data from our targeted IT decision maker (ITDM) community to provide actionable insights about spending intentions and industry trends. Since 2010, we have worked diligently at achieving one goal: eliminating the need for opinions in enterprise research, which are often formed from incomplete, biased, and statistically insignificant data. Our community of ITDMs represents $1+ trillion in annual IT spend and is positioned to provide best-in-class customer/evaluator perspectives. ETR’s proprietary data and insights from this community empower institutional investors, technology companies, and ITDMs to navigate the complex enterprise technology landscape amid an expanding marketplace. Discover what ETR can do for you at www.etr.ai