2020 And Beyond: Idaptive’s Predictions and Expectations for the New Decade
Our predictions and expectations - Zero Trust, artificial intelligence and machine learning driven identity security, and password-less authentication are coming with the dawn of the new decade.
The close of a year is a natural time for reflection, and when it also means turning the page on a new decade people are inspired to speculate on what the next ten years might hold. At Idaptive, of course, we’ve always got our minds on what’s new, what’s next, and what nascent idea is going to shake up and redefine our industry.
We expect to see so many of the seeds planted over the past few years sprout and bear fruit in the next decade, and old, antiquated systems finally replaced with more efficient, more secure, and more user-friendly ways of operating. Passwords will finally become as obsolete as CD-ROMs, and artificial intelligence, machine learning, and analytics will blossom to make security more nimble, automated and adaptable.
As we welcome in 2020, Idaptive has identified what we believe will be the primary catalysts for life-changing innovation, laying the groundwork for a period in which we collectively learn to think more holistically about digital identity, and come to understand that unchecked trust has no place in our online security.
Prediction: Identity, analytics, and passwords evolve.
Fittingly, for the year 2020, identity and access management will finally begin to feel as advanced and sophisticated as the sci-fi-worthy date suggests. Increased adoption of tools like on-device biometric authenticators and the FIDO2 standard will fold behavior patterns, contextual data, and even user idiosyncrasies into an enhanced authentication system that will eliminate passwords from applications and endpoints. You will be the key that unlocks your devices and apps, and password sharing, resetting, or hacking will be significantly less of a security threat.
Just as passwords will no longer be the dominant access management tool, so, too, will the IT world move towards reducing and even eliminating the concept of policies that govern identity and access management altogether. They will begin to more broadly leverage AI, machine learning, and contextual data of users, locations, and networks to drive more identity use cases in the next three to five years.
We’ve watched carefully over the past few years as point solution vendors have reached scale and become market leaders, thanks to the increased popularity of the cloud and mobile devices. This year we anticipate a consolidation of these point vendors, products, and technologies in the various sub-market segments of identity and access management to produce the next generation identity platform. At the same time, the next several years will see a wider proliferation of use cases related to identity that leverages blockchain technology such as self-sovereign identity for the purpose of identity verification and management, and for managing credentials, consents, and preferences.
Prediction: Zero Trust and multi-cloud environments become commonplace.
As for what we expect to see ripple across the identity and access management industry in the coming decade, it all comes down to Zero Trust.
We see 2020 as the year when investment in Zero Trust technologies (which has been slowly sown over the past few years) begins to bear real fruit. Conventional security systems like firewalls are disappearing, and more and more organizations are adopting technologies that allow them to access on-premises data center resources like apps, servers, and the cloud anytime, from anywhere.
On-premises user directories will be another technology that will find itself phased out and made obsolete in the new year, as more companies shift to the cloud. Being faster, more efficient, and more agile (not to mention more secure) will kick off a swell of momentum around quantum computing. IBM, Google, D-Wave and even AWS will push each other to bring commercial quantum computing to market, and its impact on cybersecurity will rise in line with that conversation.
As we at Idaptive raise a glass to the new year, we prepare for a decade of massive, impactful change in our industry, in technology, and in our collective understanding of all that cybersecurity is and can be. So cheers, and Happy New Year to you and yours!
Looking for more predictions? Check out the following:
Blog: Five Identity and Access Management Predictions for 2020 and Beyond
20 Predictions for 2020 @IdaptiveHQ on Twitter
Archit Lohokare
Archit Lohokare is Chief Product Officer at Idaptive, where he is responsible for product strategy, driving innovation, and bringing new products and services to market. He transitioned over to Idaptive as it was spun-out from Centrify, where—as Vice President of Product Management—he led the Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) and Unified Endpoint Management product portfolio. Prior to Centrify, Archit was Vice President of Products at Optymyze, where he led the product management team responsible for the company’s Sales Performance Management and Sales Platform-as-a-Service SaaS and PaaS solutions, securing a Leadership position in the first Gartner Magic Quadrant report on Sales Performance Management along the way.
Earlier in his career, Archit led Symantec's Cloud Information Protection Security-as-a-Service offering, and IBM's Access Management product line, comprised of Web Access Management, Identity Federation, Enterprise Single Sign-On, and Risk-based Access and Entitlements Management products. Archit joined IBM through the acquisition of Encentuate, a leading Bay Area start-up in the security software space; as an early employee, he had the opportunity to contribute to its successful exit.
Archit has an MBA from UC Berkeley-Haas School of Business, and a bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from NTU, Singapore, where he was awarded the SIA-NOL undergraduate scholarship by the Ministry of Education, Singapore.
Archit is an avid history buff, enjoys reading in his spare time and running breathlessly after his one-year-old, hyperactive son.
CHAMELEON-LIKE SUPERPOWER
If Archit could have any Chameleon-like superpower, it would be the ability to change colors quickly and adapt. “Actually, it would be like the ability of our IAM solutions to adapt instantaneously to a customer’s environment and user behavior. Anomalous user access? A snap! Presto, change-o – like a chameleon from green to red in an instant, adapt to the change in user behavior and request user to assure their identities using multi-factor authentication...”