Gartner Research

How a Human-First Approach Will Make Your Identity-First Security Initiative a Success

Published: 17 May 2023

Summary

Identity-first security approaches can lead to better security outcomes, but push controls closer to the user than in other paradigms. This research can help security and risk management leaders improve both security and user experience by taking a human-first approach to identity-first security.

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Overview

Key Findings
  • People are typically characterized as “the weakest link in security.” This builds a counterproductive narrative, resulting in an adversarial relationship between the security team and the users, which decreases overall effectiveness of security controls.

  • Silos of identity, duplicated security functions, archaic processes, and treatment of workforce populations as a “captive audience”lead to unnecessary friction that negatively impacts both security and employee user experience (UX).

  • The identity-first security paradigm requires security and risk management (SRM)leaders manage the impact of controls on UX and business process efficiency or identity-first securityapproaches will create higher control friction and lower enablement than conventional security approaches.

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Analysts:

James Hoover

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