The Importance of Contextual Risk Within Identity Governance

Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) is a foundational part of IT and cybersecurity operations, focusing on providing businesses with deeper insights into their identity and access landscape. It falls under Identity and Access Management (IAM), offering an increased understanding of a business’ identity ecosystem and enabling organizations to stay legally compliant with auditing and compliance standards such as SOX. To ensure compliance and system security, organizations have relied on evaluating risk at an inherent level to determine the level of threat a piece of access presents– until now.

In today's fast-paced technological landscape, relying solely on traditional methods is no longer sufficient. As the digital realm evolves, so do cybersecurity threats, emphasizing the need for a comprehensive approach. Recognizing inherent risk alone is not enough to safeguard against the diverse and sophisticated challenges of the cyber world. This underscores the importance of the nuanced understanding of contextual risk needed to effectively navigate the evolving cybersecurity landscape.

The current process for evaluating inherent risk in identity and access control faces significant challenges due to the complexities of modern IT environments, evolving business models, and stringent regulatory compliance requirements. Traditional Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) tools struggle to cope with the complexities arising from mixed IT environments, decentralized business operations, and the demand for enhanced security in the face of regulatory scrutiny. The result is a scenario where identities, both human and machine, proliferate rapidly, each with varying levels of access privileges. This situation poses a considerable challenge for security practitioners, risk owners, and business managers, who lack the time, skills, and contextual information needed to manage identities and access privileges effectively. The current state of identity control is deemed unsustainable, necessitating a reevaluation of traditional processes and the adoption of advanced IGA technologies to address the escalating risks.

Contextual risk, within the realm of Identity Governance, refers to the dynamic and complex set of factors influenced by the specific context in which an enterprise operates. Unlike inherent risk, which represents the potential for damaging impact in a given environment, contextual risk is shaped by ever-changing elements such as the social, political, and economic environment, emerging cyber threats, and the specifics of employees' locations and working times.

The importance of contextual risk lies in its critical role in protecting the enterprise. Recognizing and mitigating contextual risk is essential for achieving an appropriate balance between risk and reward. This involves considering factors like the type of systems and data, individual roles, timing and location of access requests, purpose of access, previous behavior, and the current security posture. For these reasons, considering both inherent and contextual risk is essential to overall risk management.

Combining inherent and contextual risk in the assessment of identity risk enhances accuracy, aids in prioritization, and ensures a holistic evaluation of high-risk access. Inherent risk addresses potential damaging impacts in a given environment, such as security awareness gaps or unpatched applications, and is relatively straightforward to recognize. Contextual risk, influenced by dynamic factors like the social environment and emerging threats, is more intricate but crucial for protecting the enterprise. By blending both, assessors achieve a more comprehensive understanding of identity risk. This allows for accurate risk assessments, enabling prioritization based on the specific context, and ensures that flags are raised for access requests that are holistically deemed high risk. Balancing these components optimally equips assessors to navigate the complexities of identity risk management effectively.

Clarity Security has accomplished this through the creation and implementation of our patented risk scoring system. This model leverages machine learning to quickly and accurately assess each piece of access and prioritize those that present the highest risk to the organization. This enables stakeholders to more quickly remedy the most urgent access concerns, serving as the highest form of identity access protection a business can employ.

To learn more about what’s going on and how to ensure the best security posture for your organization moving forward, read our full white paper here.