With the advent of cloud applications companies have begun seeking ways to provide secure application access for their employees, customers and business partners. We sought the best applications in a small number of spaces in which we could focus our attention to provide our customers the best of breed for their specific needs.
In the modern use of web applications, the hard perimeter often enforced by corporate IT departments is less effective at securing corporate assets and ensuring user's privacy and confidentiality than in the days when applications were hosted in the company's data center and managed locally. Identity and access enforcement provides the virtual perimeter required to secure the company's IP assets and customers' private information.
According to the Verizon DBIR published every year, there doesn't seem to be much improvement in the number of breaches due to credential compromise. Most attacks aren't very sophisticated -- usually simple phishing attacks to learn the credentials of a trusted employee or customer's account. Modern IAM software enables secure employee authentication into the company's web applications with a single sign-on and for customers to access the company's sales and ordering applications through identity federation, reducing the company's liability exposure due to potentially compromised PII.
As the famous Peter Steiner cartoon in The New Yorker opines, "On the internet nobody knows you're a dog." It's the job of the IAM system to ensure that the users, customers or partners are who they say they are.
