KuppingerCole Blog

When thinking about the C-suite’s priorities, people tend to focus on growth, security, digital transformation or, more recently, keeping a remote workforce running. All of these aspects are important to keep the business profitable, remain at the forefront of innovation, maintain shareholder satisfaction and ensure that employees are safe, equipped and content. Yet, there is something that underpins every one of these priorities: digital trust. And without it, every area of the business would cease to function. Digital trust is a concept no business leader can ignore today. With...

Zero Trust is a key paradigm for cybersecurity today, used well beyond the security circles. The goal is building cybersecurity that “ never (blindly) trusts ”, but “ always verifies .” This traditionally meant verifying Who has access to What resource. In the past, the Who typically meant a human with a digital identity being given access to some application within an organization. Once the individual was given access to said application, that individual would be verified via an IAM tool’s authentication capability and then authorized based on policy...

There is no single right way to do cloud-based identity and access management (IAM) services. Not only is every organization at a different place in their journey, but each will prioritize cloud benefits differently. Therefore, no matter where you are on your cloud journey, modular and integrated solutions can strengthen your identity security, help you achieve governance and a Zero Trust model, and get compliant. The cloud comes with great opportunities as well as significant dangers. When including it in your IGA strategy (of which it should be a critical element), keep identity...

On April 21, 2021, the European Commission proposed a legal framework for Artificial Intelligence that covers all AI systems that impact natural persons within the European Union, regardless of whether they are operated from within or outside the EU. Main goals There are a few stated goals that create the foundation for this proposed regulation. First is that AI systems must be safe and must respect the fundamental rights and values of the European Union. This must be true not only for the outcomes of AI systems, but for the entire value chain of AI development. The commission...

What is left to say about PAM that has not already been said? Well in my opinion, quite a lot – as I hope you find out when you join me at the forthcoming KCLive Event, Operationalizing Privileged Access Management. I talk to PAM vendors all the time and I believe it is a truly exciting space to be covering and some of the innovations that vendors of all sizes are bringing to the table promise real progress in how we manage privilege access in the workplace – and, as you will discover, beyond the workplace.  Punching above its weight PAM is not by a long chalk...

Introducing Intelligent Data Management Cloud (IDMC) as a Comprehensive, Cloud-Native, and Cloud-First Approach to Data Management Data is the new gold, the new oil, or whatever. In the cloud, you only own the data, but not the applications, systems, or networks anymore. Data is essential for Digital Transformation. There is so much data that is sprawling that it is hard to keep control of it. And, within the SaaS and PaaS tenants, data is what belongs to the tenant. Many organizations fail in managing this data sprawl and implement appropriate Data Governance. Data Is Ubiquitous:...

Cloud, AI software, and voice recognition firm Nuance is Microsoft’s latest strategic acquisition aimed at putting the tech giant in a strong position to shape healthcare and workplace applications of the future. Microsoft has agreed to acquire Nuance for around $19bn and the deal is expected to close before the end of 2021. First Focus on Healthcare The acquisition has the potential to put Microsoft at the forefront of workplace innovation due to Nuance’s AI software expertise focusing on voice recognition, stemming from core algorithms developed in the early 1980s by...

The European Central Bank (ECB) is exploring a digital euro. Early October 2020, the ECB Governing Council released a whitepaper discussing its initial research on such a project. One of the ECB’s clearest and most repeated messages is that a digital euro will not replace cash, but complement it. A digital euro is meant to facilitate electronic payments, while cash would remain a valid form of payment and the primary form of value storage. The European Central Bank’s Exploration of a Digital Euro This exploratory paper comes as a direct result of a digitalized economy...

Microsoft announced on April 5, 2020 that its Azure AD Verifiable Credentials is now in public preview. This solution enables organizations to design and issue verifiable credentials to their users, be it enterprises issuing employment credentials to their employees, universities enrolling students or issuing diplomas, governments issuing passports, ID cards, and countless other uses. This is an exciting step to meaningfully give agency back to individuals to securely hold and exchange their identity data online and in the physical world. Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) are a...

I’ve been in IT long enough to remember when business applications were home-grown and written in COBOL. In the early stages of my career, I even gave computer classes on the standard algorithms for good COBOL programming, such as sorting and grouping. In the more than three decades since, I’ve seen SAP R/3 being discussed as the revolutionary approach for business applications, moving these from mainframes into client/server models. I’ve seen the emergence of the first SaaS applications, with some such as Salesforce or Ariba still being around. I’ve seen the...