From a technology standpoint, as a society the world of business has gone through two distinct stages in the evolution of its information security focus. The first addressed network based protection and preventative controls such as firewalls and anti-malware. The second looked at data-centric and detective controls such as encryption and intrusion/extrusion monitoring. Since breaches continue to occur at a record pace, what is need new is clearly a new evolution, one that pushes towards individual focused security through granular user monitoring and management as provided by solutions such as Identity and Access Management. While IAM isn't a new technology field, it is one whose time has come and CISO need to begin investing in modern-day, light-weight, easy to implement IAM solutions now to stay ahead of the curve, and reduce enterprise threats.
Takeaways:
The breach onslaught demonstrates that existing security solutions are incapable of defending current threats
Enterprises need to begin looking at security from an activity perspective rather than an artifact perspective
IAM provides activity insight, and therefore threat awareness, no other platform can equal