AppViewX released the findings of a commissioned research study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of AppViewX on Zero Trust and converged human-machine identity security. The survey found that among organizations that have suffered data breaches more than half (58%) were caused by issues related to digital certificates. As a result of service outages, 57% said their organizations have incurred costs upwards of $100,000 USD per outage.

A full copy of the AppViewX sponsored study entitled Secure A Zero Trust Future With An Integrated, Human-Machine Identity Security Approach is available here. 

According to the Forrester study, "Enterprise organizations have traditionally been less focused on managing machine identities compared to human ones, partly because they have different requirements and more complicated lifecycle and security challenges. These digital certificates offer authentication and protect sensitive information. Yet, few [organizations] are confident in successfully layering and managing identity security across machines and navigating responsibility assignment for privacy and security."

Survey Highlights

As part of the study sponsored by AppViewX, Forrester surveyed 327 senior manager level and above IT and security decision-makers with influence over identity and access management (IAM) strategy at firms in the United States, Europe, and APAC with over $500 million USD in annual revenue. The study evaluates the challenges in implementing an integrated human-machine identity security approach to achieve Zero Trust. Some of the study's key findings include:

• 58% of organizations that suffered a data breach attributed the cause to avoidable certificate-management related issues
• 52% of organizations that suffered a service or application outage attributed the cause to certificated related issues
• 57% said their organizations have incurred costs upwards of $100,000 USD per outage
• 53% of respondents said they want to operationalize and fully automate their organization's machine identity management (MIM) initiatives within the next one to two years
• 53% of decision-makers highlighted the need to balance management of human and machine identities and vulnerabilities in an increasingly complex IT, edge and hybrid-cloud environments as a top driver of their organizations' approach to MIM
• According to respondents, the top two drivers for implementing MIM were the desire to reduce the risk of data breaches (51%) and gain visibility over certificates and keys across emerging technologies (48%)
  

"We believe these findings demonstrate the risks and costs associated with lack of visibility and control over machine identity management, which can result in reputationally and financially damaging data breaches and service outages," said Murali Palanisamy,  Chief Solutions Officer at AppViewX. "With machine-based identities multiplying exponentially, organizations need to implement an integrated approach to machine and human identity management as a foundation for identity-first security and path to Zero Trust."