2020 and Beyond: Charting a Course to Better Security

As we count down the final days of 2019 (and amazingly the decade!), it’s that time of year where we reflect on our performance, make a few tweaks based on what we’ve learned and set our intention for the upcoming year.

For the Identity Defined Security Alliance, 2019 was a very significant year.  We officially launched as a standalone non-profit entity in February and welcomed 11 new members, bringing the number of identity and security vendors and solution providers committed to helping organizations achieve identity-centric security to 29.

As part of our outreach and advocacy of identity-centric security strategies, we engaged with the identity and security community through organizations such as ISACA, Cloud Security Alliance, IDPro and NCCoE and industry conferences including RSA, RMISC, Identiverse, BlackHat and Gartner IAM.

In 2019 we ramped up our focus on providing thoughtful and practical content that provided practitioners with best practices, customer stories and frameworks, including a few highlights below:

1. The Path to Zero Trust Starts with Identity provided a modernized approach to zero trust by leveraging identity-centric principles.
2. State of Identity Survey; How Security Teams are Addressing Risk, provides insight into how security teams are addressing the risk of an identity-related breach, based on a survey of 511 security leaders.
3. Guest Blogs from customers Adobe and LogRhythm and other leaders in the identity and security space giving perspective on topics ranging from tomorrow’s CISO to the role of identity as a national critical function.
4. Zero Trust Myth series delves into the identity-related myths of zero trust.
5. IAM Best Practices series giving practitioners advice on the most important best practices for establishing a solid IAM foundation.

2020 and Beyond

In September the customer advisory and executive board conducted a strategy workshop focused on planning for the future based on what we have learned in the past.  The end result of that discussion was that the practitioner community needs more of the same.  Our survey results published in December confirmed that organizations are dealing with an explosion of identities now and in the future and with that trend, the risk of an identity-related breach without proper alignment between identity and security strategies, teams, budgets, and technologies.

The IDSA will continue to focus on our mission of helping organizations reduce risk through identity-centric security strategies, by providing education, best practices and resources.  Our priorities for 2020 include:

1. Content – continue to develop content that helps organizations integrate identity into their security strategies, including but certainly not limited to expanded frameworks, customer implementation stories, industry research, the application of identity-centric principles to established frameworks and identity and security best practices.
2. Membership – expand membership to provide a balanced, cross-vendor and cross-industry perspective to the community and provide a vendor-neutral, collaborative environment for addressing customer problems.
3. Awareness – continue outreach to the identity and security practitioner community through virtual events, speaking engagements, media outreach and content development.

As we close out 2019 and embark on a new year and a new decade, we look forward to coming together as an industry and community to help security leaders chart a course to better security.