SAILPOINT SURVEY CONFIRMS: EMPLOYEES WILL SELL PASSWORDS FOR AS LITTLE AS £100

IAM Market Leader Offers “Trade-In” Program for Outdated Password Management Solutions

While the news is filled with high-profile security breaches, SailPoint’s 7th Annual Market Pulse Survey uncovered a widespread level of employee indifference towards protecting sensitive corporate data, including personal information of customers. In fact, an alarming number of employees surveyed admitted they would sell their passwords, some for as little as £100. These stats are based on a global survey of 1,000 employees at large organisations.

In addition to blatant sabotage, the survey also confirmed that employees are lax about password management in general. Specifically, one in five employees routinely share login information for corporate applications with other members of their team, which increases the potential that the passwords they sell might not even be their own. Compounding the problem, 56 per cent of respondents admitted to some level of daily password reuse for the corporate applications they access, with many as 14 per cent of employees using the same password across all applications.

“Employees may have moved away from the post-it note password list, but using the same password across personal and work applications exposes the company,” said Kevin Cunningham, president and founder of SailPoint. “Just think of the major breaches that occurred in 2014 requiring users to change their passwords on social media. If those were the same passwords being used to access mission critical applications, it’s very easy for hacking organisations to take advantage and get into more valuable areas. The fact is that password reuse poses a significant risk to any organisation – but the good news is that there are solutions that can quickly address the problem.”

Today’s employees need to remember a dozen or more passwords, and are tempted to reuse the same one, even if it eliminates the security benefits of having a password in the first place. Organisations recognise this and want to enforce better password management policies, but legacy password management solutions are too expensive and haven’t kept up with today’s business needs. To help organisations combat this growing challenge, SailPoint is now providing a “trade-in” program for legacy password management solutions. Through June 2015, SailPoint will replace a legacy password management solution with IdentityNow’s Password Management Service for less than what that company is currently paying annually for support and maintenance.

Cunningham continued: “We knew password management was a pain point for companies around the world, but our recent survey showed us how much companies are struggling. We believe this offer is a unique way to demonstrate SailPoint’s innovative approach to identity and access management. And, there’s no risk, because qualified organisations can replace their outdated solutions with SailPoint’sIdentityNow Password Management Service for less than they’re already spending on a tool that isn’t working.”

With IdentityNow, SailPoint’s SaaS-based identity and access management solution, organisations can address the growing issue of password reuse by providing employees with the convenience of a single place to store passwords, while providing IT organisations with the controls to ensure strong, unique passwords are being used. Organisations will immediately benefit from IdentityNow’s password management capabilities for both cloud and on-premises applications. Capabilities include:

• An intuitive, self-service password reset portal to increase user productivity through convenient self-service reset and password change options
• Mobile/off-network and desktop support to reduce operational costs and unburden the help desk by reducing calls relating to password requests
• Centralised access policies and controls that strengthen security through consistent enforcement of strong password policies unify and centralise password management across data center and cloud resources
• Password intercept and synch to improve end user satisfaction by automatically synchronising password changes across all on-premises and cloud-based applications
• Integrated single sign-on that reduces the need to rely on application-specific passwords while simplifying how users access their apps

SailPoint’s Market Pulse Survey was designed to measure employee attitudes toward protecting corporate digital assets. The company commissioned Vanson Bourne, an independent research firm, to interview 1,000 office workers at large companies with at least 3,000 employees across Australia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States. The Market Pulse Survey’s results about password management trends are detailed in an infographic “XX.” Additionally, the complete results of the 2014 Market Pulse Survey are detailed in an infographic “Employees Going Rogue with Corporate Data,” at www.sailpoint.com/2014MarketPulseSurvey. (Interested parties have permission to embed and share both infographics on their websites or blogs with attribution.)