Identity & Access Management

Identity and Access Management (IAM) has become a major priority for the modern enterprise. It was once viewed as an operational IT issue, but because of numerous high-level breaches due to inadequate attempts to effectively manage and control user access, as well as the ever-increasing digital transformation, IAM is now gaining CxO and board-level attention.

The importance of IAM has over recent years been elevated by an evolving technology, business and regulatory landscape, where trends such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Operational Technology (OT), and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), Business to Business and Business to Customer (B2B/B2C) and “Move to Cloud”, as well as new compliance requirements such as NIS2, DORA (Digital Operations Resilience Act) and CRA (Cyber Resilience Act), which are forcing organisations to re-evaluate and re-think how digital identities are managed, used and secured.

Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a security and business discipline that involves people, processes and technology to help the right people or machines to access the right assets at the right time for the right reasons, while keeping unauthorized access and fraud at bay.

In that context, IAM not only provides a governance framework, but also opens digital identities up to its potential in digital transformation, and it is based on the premise that digital identities not only belong to people, but essentially to everyone and everything that needs access to and/or has a presence on a digital infrastructure.

IAM makes it possible to support ambitions to be more efficient, agile, and digitally secure, by allowing the organisation to implement intelligent, business and risk-based decisions about who is allowed to access which assets, when and in what context. IAM thus provides both business and end-user benefits, such as a faster, more precise, and context-aware identity lifecycle management and single sign-on, resulting in reduced operational costs and vacancies, improved cybersecurity, efficiency, and transparency, plus – finally - an improved user experience (UX).

At KPMG, we help organisations with the ambition or imperative, to implement or elevate their Identity and Access Management initiatives to its full business potential. For us, the cornerstone to your IAM success, is helping you bridge the gap between your IAM initiative(s) and the business and enable you to take an active ownership.

Our IAM competencies and experiences covers orchestrating people, processes, and technology, at any stage of the IAM life cycle and are designed to provide a strategic planning, execution, and governance framework. For that purpose, we offer best practice models that are adaptable to the organisation’s specific requirements for cybersecurity, compliance, and business support.

We conduct assessments, help build and guide an IAM program/portfolio, devise strategy and roadmaps, integrate IAM with business processes and enterprise architecture, construct target operating models, provide technology and market insights, support vendor selection, optimize IAM operations and offer a managed service to those inclined to outsource their IAM platform.

The foundation for IAM success, however, is proper governance and guidance. Experience – as well as research – shows that properly governed IAM initiatives fail and costs significantly less, align better with corporate strategy and leadership goals, and in turn has a significantly higher chance of securing (multi-year) funding through a positive return on investment.