The identity and access management (IAM) evolution from simple access controls to a sophisticated framework integrating multifactor authentication, biometrics and AI has significantly enhanced digital security and privacy.

The identity management ecosystem needs to evolve, Enron’s compliance game led to core aspects of identity, privileged users posing a danger, and perimeter security being insufficient in the cloud era,

The identity management ecosystem needs to evolve, as shown by lessons from Enron’s compliance issues. Key aspects include the risks posed by privileged users and the inadequacy of traditional perimeter security in the cloud era, according to Mark McClain (pictured), founder and chief executive officer of SailPoint Technologies Inc.

Mark McClain, founder and CEO of SailPoint Technologies, talks to theCUBE about IAM evolution.

“The idea now that you’ve protected your enterprise by locking down who can access your financial application and you don’t know where all that data lives in SharePoint, you’re kidding yourself,” McClain said. “The explosion of identities, the explosion of data, and SailPoint sits at that critical intersection of, do you know who all your identities are, what they are? Do you know all the data you want to protect and have access to? Understanding that complexity and managing to risk on that is very challenging.”

McClain spoke with theCUBE Research’s Dave Vellante and Shelly Kramer at the RSA Conference, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the need for identity management ecosystem to evolve to address the complexities of managing identity and access in the cloud era. (* Disclosure below.)

The strategic impact of IAM evolution on digital security

User convenience in accessing multiple apps through a single sign-on is more secure than using sticky notes for passwords, but it doesn’t fully address the security and risk profiles of all the different apps, McClain pointed out.

“What we have developed over many years, a couple of decades now, is the very difficult task of going into all these enterprises. We have 20,000 different connectors to bespoke applications now in our library, because everybody’s got something different,” McClain said. “You’ve got to connect to all of it, pull that data in, map it and explain it to people. So, long-winded answer to convergence says, let me grab these three business apps, identity apps, put them together, and I’ll sell them to you as one thing. Procurement people love that.”

Companies are moving toward multicloud environments to avoid vendor dominance. SailPoint focuses on managing identity access and permissions and understanding who has access to what is crucial, McClain explained.

“Every company who said, ‘I’m an Amazon shop. I’m an Azure shop,’ now, what they’re all saying is, ‘I’m multicloud,’” he said. “Why? Because old guys in tech like me will tell you customers hate when one vendor has apparent dominance of market space. They know that’s going to cause innovation to slow and prices to go up.”

Investing in AI for security has risks and challenges, as it’s still early days and more about enhancing human capabilities rather than fully relying on it, McClain added.

“There’s a sense that these tools are very early stage. While there’s a crazy amount of energy and excitement about AI, we’re in the early days here,” McClain said. “If you’re a security vendor, you don’t want to take a lot of risks on how you, in fact, perform security. Putting it all in the hands of an AI tool and just trusting it’s going to give you exactly the right answer is kind of risky, I would argue, at this stage.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of the RSA Conference:

(* Disclosure: SailPoint Technologies Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither SailPoint Technologies nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE