Privacy, Security, Efficiency: The Benefits of a Cloud Identity Provider

Cloud-based services are becoming more and more common as organizations seek out secure and efficient solutions for their IT needs. A 2016 guide from IDC, a market research firm, predicts that by 2019, global spending on cloud services will rise to over $141 billion—double the amount of spending in 2015. One of the functions increasingly provisioned from the cloud is identity.

CIOs and others considering outsourcing cloud identity solutions to a third party expert need to know what the benefits are. Let's take a look at how cloud identity supplies improved privacy, security, and efficiency over legacy identity systems.

Privacy

Legacy identity systems are all too often patchwork quilts of solutions, with “identity islands” floating around disconnected from one another. In this scenario, privacy ends up being patchwork as well. According to a Ponemon study, more than half of IT practitioners do not know where sensitive or confidential company data is located. If they don’t know where it is, it stands to reason that they also do not know which identities can access that information.

Enter the cloud. With identity provisioned by experts, storage of sensitive data is managed for companies by trusted third parties. Encryption keeps the information secure. Jus