Editorial

Identity Management as a Service ‘cornerstone of authentication’ for IoT

Understanding ID management will be critical for future of IoT, wearable technology and more, says new report

Posted 17 November 2020 by Christine Horton


Digital identity will be the single biggest gating factor to the adoption of enterprise Internet of Things (IoT).

That’s according to a new report, Digital Identity Infrastructure and Services Market by Asset Type, Deployment Type, Organization Type and Industry Vertical 2020 – 2025, by Research and Markets.

Additionally, the report forecasts that digital identity infrastructure and services will be a $42.3 billion global opportunity by 2025. The five largest industry verticals will be financial services, telecom and it, insurance, government/public sector, and healthcare services.

The research evaluates the current state and outlook of identity management solutions and services with a focus on leading technical approaches, technologies, companies, and solutions. This includes opportunities in emerging areas such as the Identity of Things (IDoT) and IoT identity managed services.

“Managing identities and access control for enterprise applications remains one of the greatest challenges facing IT today,” noted the report. “While an enterprise may be able to leverage several cloud computing services without a good identity and access management strategy, in the long run extending an organisation’s identity services into the cloud is a necessary prerequisite for strategic use of on-demand computing services.”

Cloud-based IAM

The study says that supporting today’s rapidly evolving cloud ecosystem requires an assessment of an organisation’s readiness to conduct cloud-based Identity and Access Management (IAM), as well as understanding the capabilities of their cloud computing providers.

“Today’s world of identity management is largely focused on personal, directly human-related activities such as secure access to physical or digital assets. Emerging areas such as wearable technology will play a role in terms of enterprise security and access control,” it said.

“In addition, the future of ICT will include many more identity-related issues and challenges that pertain to non-human activities such as those autonomous actions that occur on behalf of humans with IoT. Therefore, it is critically important to understand the state of Identity Management today so that one can better position for the future of ID Management in an IoT world. It is very important to have a foundational understanding of ID management as it will be a critically important area for the ICT network of the future including IoT, wearable technology, and more.”