IAM (Identity and Access Management) and GRC (Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance) are two of the most important IT market segments these days. They are driven by various factors. One is increasing regulatory pressure. Companies need to manage their risks, including access risks to their corporate information. That has put IAM and GRC on top of the IT agenda.
However, IAM and GRC are also enabling technologies to help enterprises better deal with major trends in overall IT. Social computing, mobile computing, and cloud computing all are about dealing with more groups of users, and thus more individual users, and with technologies where corporate information is more at risk. IAM and GRC help in ensuring information security in a changing environment. They thus are cornerstones of an IT which is agile and can make use of innovations but still fulfills the (increasing) needs for information security.
