Something Old and Something New

Eric Norlin provides some insight into what to do (related to identity management) in an economic slowdown:

Something Old:

"1. SSO and Password Reset: The facts are on the wall. If you can reduce the number of helpdesk calls for password reset, you're going to save a TON of money. You can do that through self-service modules, E-SSO, web sso, or even federation. Just do it."

Something New:

"2. Automating Compliance: This is a big one, and you probably won't get it done before the recession ends. However, the more you achieve automated compliance controls, the more big bucks you can save on manual audits. Throw everything from RBAC to de-provisioning into this bucket and then get started looking at what really will slice greenbacks soonest."

Password Reset and SSO have long been good entry points into Identity Management and also proven creators of cost reduction and efficiency.

Automated Compliance is a somewhat more recent phenomena that also yields cost reduction and efficiency. You may be wondering though how many companies are able to get to automated compliance without giving an arm and a leg to define requirements and processes that enable automated compliance. Might the initial effort might defeat the purpose of cost reduction?

One thing Eric wrote is probably key to that discussion – "the more you achieve automated compliance controls..." which to me means, let's not get caught up in the grand notion of automated compliance. Implement a few key automated controls that eliminate significant manual effort in the compliance audit process. And that will bring you cost reduction.