Introduction
While the emerging recession pushes every C-suite to rethink spending habits, many IT leaders may consider reevaluating their identity and access management budget.
However, the changing cybersecurity landscape and increasing threat vectors have already increased the challenges for CISOs, and IT heads. And they consistently emphasize the decision makers to improve their cybersecurity spending.
Securing the organization should be the utmost priority for your organization in 2023, and identity management is one of the critical parts of your cybersecurity posture.
Every year, cyberattacks are becoming more sophisticated and costly. Most businesses feel spending all of the available budgets on cybersecurity, even if they think they have taken reasonable steps in securing the organization.
However, the truth is that by spending everything you can on cybersecurity risks, you will find yourself at risk of being unprepared for the additional expense when the economy declines.
And the key to optimizing and protecting your CIAM budget is to be clear and sure about everything that adds value to your organization since this isn’t the time to axe your budget; instead, it’s the time to increase it.
Let’s look at some aspects that can help you plan your CIAM budget smartly for 2023.
Analyzing the Challenges
In today’s day and age, cybersecurity is a crucial element of any organization. With the increasing number of cyberattacks, organizations need to invest in an efficient cybersecurity solution.
However, when it comes to spending on your CIAM budget, many organizations fail to plan their budgets for the year ahead. And this can be detrimental to the overall success of your CIAM program.
Before you cut your budget, it’s crucial to analyze your organization's challenges and the hour’s needs. You also need to assess whether there are any other areas where you can cut costs or increase efficiency to make up for any loss in revenue caused by cutting back on your IAM budget.
You need to identify what kind of risk profile your business face. For example, suppose you have a manufacturing unit with large amounts of sensitive data. In that case, spending more money on seeing that information from potential threats makes sense.
On the other hand, if you are an online retailer or e-commerce site, then your risks will vary depending on what kind of data is being stored by your firm (i.e., financial information).
As a CISO or an IT head, you need to convince your CEO and key decision-makers to understand the importance of good cybersecurity hygiene, especially when cyberattacks are becoming more prominent.
Incorporating Necessary Cybersecurity Tools and Technologies
Investing a portion of your overall budget into incorporating cybersecurity best practices is always better.
Investing in cybersecurity tools and technologies would be wise if you run an organization. These days, it is about implementing best practices and having the right tools and technologies in place. This will help you guard against ransomware attacks and data breaches.
Many organizations understand the importance of investing in cybersecurity tools and technologies but don't know how much they should allocate toward this purpose. To help you plan better for your future IAM budget, here are the critical areas where you should invest:
- Invest in a robust customer identity and access management (CIAM) solution
- Get zero trust architecture
- Enable risk-based authentication
- Frequent employee training sessions
Making the Most out of Your Current CIAM Budget
Since decision-makers are hard to convince to stretch your cybersecurity budget, you need to understand that optimizing your current budget makes a lot of sense.
Whether discarding old-school tools and conventional identity management systems or migrating legacy systems, you must release the financial burden.
Also, you can plan to upgrade your existing identity provider since most of the cloud-based identity management solutions offer identity migration services where your current customer identities can be migrated like a breeze.
This way, you can reinforce your identity management practices since the cutting-edge CIAMs offer robust security and a great user experience.
In Conclusion
The challenges of planning and budgeting for customer IAM are more significant than most people suspect.
As you plan your CIAM budget for 2023, consider which challenges pose the most significant challenges to you, which challenges are most likely to occur in the future, and how to best address them with a carefully planned budget.
An intelligent approach to budget planning can make all the difference for your security team.
