It has been observed that around 85% of the IT decision-makers are now setting identity and access management investments as their main priority, rather than any other security solution. This is stated in the CISO Survival Guide published by Cisco Investments, the startup division of Cisco, along with the venture capital firms Forgepoint Capital, NightDragon, and Team8.

Interviews with Cisco customers, chief information security officers, innovators, startup founders, and other experts led to the creation of the 'guide', which examined the cybersecurity market in relation to identity management, data protection, software supply chain integrity, and cloud migration.

From 30,000 feet up: More interoperability, less friction, and data that is genuinely relevant and understandable for decision-makers, according to interviewees, are the most essential requirements.

The main spending priorities of the report were fairly evenly distributed, with user and device identity, cloud identity, governance, and remote access receiving the most mentions from CISOs. 

Cloud security turned out to be the primary concern, with a focus on the newly emerging field of managing cloud infrastructure entitlements.

Demands of CISOs: Ease of Use, Holistic Platforms, CIEMs

The three main areas of identity access management, clouds, and data that CISOs believe are most concerning are:

• The fragmented world of security silos is because of the lack of unified platforms for IAMs, identity governance and administration, and privileged access control. 
• Enterprise clients are embracing cloud service providers' offerings for managing cloud infrastructure entitlements.
• The CISOs were against the use of acronyms since they were bothered by the overuse of acronyms like CIEM.

Moreover, the authors of the Cisco Investment Study note that “This trend imposes cycles for CISOs to vet and unpack these purportedly new categories, only for them to discover they are a rehash of existing solutions.”

Top Motivators Will Look for Management Solutions 

Apparently, some top motivators cited by CISCOs will be investing in identity management solutions for the management of user access privileges, identity compliance, and the swift expansion of companies' threat surfaces.

Here, we are mentioning some of the changes that the IT decision-makers look forward to in the next-generation identity platforms: 

• Ease of integration (21% of those polled). 
• Platform-based solution, versus single-point or endpoint offerings (15%). • Ratings from independent analysts (15%). 
• Price (11%). 
• Market adoption (11%). 
• Simplicity of deployment and operations (10%). 
• Ability to deploy at scale quickly (9%). 
• Ability to add features easily (8%).