5 reasons to level up from your legacy platform and migrate to a modern identity security solution

Enterprises have a lot invested in their legacy identity security solutions, so it comes as no surprise when they may resist the idea of migrating to a modern solution. It can be difficult to convince stakeholders across the organization to turn their backs on the time and money already spent in maintaining the complex web of integrations that comprise the enterprise’s identity backbone. But the fact of the matter is that a legacy solution is often doing the business more harm than good. Here are five reasons to upgrade your legacy platform to a modern identity solution.

Reason #1: Digital transformation and innovation require speed

Identity by itself doesn’t generate revenue, but it does have a direct impact on business success. According to the Accenture Technical Vision 2023 report, 85% of global executives agree that digital identity is no longer just a “technical issue”; it’s becoming a strategic business imperative for their organizations. When identity is done wrong, onboarding and provisioning processes create delays, and these delays can result in a loss of productivity and loss of revenue during digital transformations. Innovation may also suffer from delays if foundational identity capabilities are not in place.

A modern identity security solution secures and supports next-generation business technology transformation and innovation programs with built-in identity controls. Out-of-the-box connectors, APIs, event triggers and additional capabilities can extend security across a hybrid environment – crucial for organizations as they continue their transition to the cloud. Because a modern solution requires less customization than a legacy solution, the organization realizes a quicker time to value while benefiting from faster application onboarding and a simpler technology stack.

Reason #2: Identity risk creates business risk

Thanks to trends like cloud-first and remote work, identities are rapidly proliferating, making it impossible for humans to securely connect the right people to the right technology at scale. Meanwhile, as identity stores grow, so too does the attack surface created by these identities. In fact, a recent Identity Defined Security Alliance report stated that 84% of organizations experienced an identity-related breach. From this perspective alone, legacy identity platforms have outlived their usefulness.

A modern identity security solution is designed to handle the identity security demands of a digital business. It leverages AI-driven data intelligence to automate the discovery, management, and control of all user access. Not only does the organization make better and faster access decisions, but it can also quickly spot and respond to potential threats. A modern solution delivers correct and timely access to every user when they need it, proactively engages business users to identify risky access, and helps security professionals intelligently create and maintain access models in a dynamic IT environment.

Reason #3: Regulatory compliance practically requires it.

No business is free from complying with an ever-growing and evolving list of cybersecurity and privacy regulatory requirements. And many businesses are finding that it’s nearly impossible to maintain and demonstrate continuous compliance using the outdated identity governance practices supported by legacy solutions. Manual identity management processes and a lack of transparency into who has access to what increase the cost of compliance and put businesses at a higher risk of non-compliance.

A modern identity security solution is designed to address these common regulatory compliance challenges. For example, AI and automation facilitate compliance processes like identity certifications. Instead of manually reviewing each and every line of a spreadsheet to certify appropriate access rights, business managers can automatically approve low-risk access requests and focus their reviews on users with access that is suspicious and outside the norm or high-risk. Reducing the review process to potentially risky identities improves efficiency and accuracy, lowers compliance violation risks, and increases productivity. A modern solution also provides intelligence to help organizations strengthen preventive and detective controls, as well as global visibility to spot potential compliance exposures and liabilities.

Reason #4: It’s costing you—big time.

Put simply, legacy identity solutions represent rapidly accumulating technical debt. Legacy identity solutions are limited to feature enhancements and their capability to support changing compliance requirements. Rather than continue to advance, legacy solutions grow more complex and costly to manage.

Meanwhile, organizations are accelerating their journey to the cloud. During this stage, if their IAM platform is legacy, it costs much more to develop custom integrations to keep up with the pace of the business while at the same time putting their own data and platforms at risk of falling short of compliance as that legacy platform may not be secure enough. It also adds to the challenge of maintaining the skills to support these advancing customizations. As the people with the skills to manage these legacy solutions leave, it becomes increasingly difficult and costly to replace them.

In many areas of the business, organizations are transitioning from SaaS-first to SaaS-only. They’ve recognized that there is little value-add from managing applications and their underlying infrastructure on-premises. Identity security is no different. A SaaS-based solution relieves organizations from the capital and operational expenses of managing an on-prem tech stack while providing immediate access to new integrations, features, and functionality.

Modern solutions also incorporate advanced technologies like data analytics to enable organizations to better utilize their investments. Analytics not only improve the user experience by giving users the access they need when they need it but also by helping to identify the risk associated with that access and manage it appropriately.

Reason #5: You can do better.

There is simply no need to continue to pour time and money into a solution that is difficult to use, reduces the speed of innovation, and increases security and regulatory risk. A modern identity security solution seamlessly integrates identity processes with such ease and simplicity that maintaining security and regulatory compliance become autonomous allowing the organization can focus on growth and innovation. New workers have the access they need on day one, and guardrails help the organization embrace identity governance best practices.

Next steps

After years of building and maintaining a legacy identity solution, the prospect of migrating to a modern solution can be daunting. And, unfortunately, detangling the complex integrations of a legacy solution can be expensive and time-consuming. However, not migrating will cost the business more time, resources, and innovation. Don’t keep putting it off. Learn more about making the migration with SailPoint and Accenture at sailpoint.com/identity-library/legacy-modernization.