How to enable access to business operations while maintaining security

Businesses need to have a complete picture of their deployments before they can properly implement IAM or other protocols. This can include specific groups of users (including third parties with system access and remote users), existing on-premises and cloud systems and tools regularly used to complete essential tasks.

The global average cost of a data breach declined to $4.44 million in 2025, down from a peak of $4.88 million in 2024.³ Organizations that maintain inventory of their most critical data — and set strong identity and privilege access controls to protect it — can reduce the risk of the most damaging data-related cyber incidents. 

Privileged access management is part of most IAM approaches. It applies additional protections to the most sensitive accounts and processes and gives administrators visibility into who is accessing them and what activity occurs when sessions are in progress. 

No matter what access controls you implement, employees play a key role in protecting their identities. If your organization relies on passwords, ensure that all employees are educated in the fundamentals of creating strong passwords and regularly updating them. Train employees on phishing, credential theft and emerging threats, and ensure they understand both the value and limitations of protections such as MFA.

Often referred to as “never trust, always verify,” the zero trust model presumes that company networks are already breached or vulnerable, that users must be validated continuously and that security is enhanced by creating segmentation across company networks. Zero trust architecture typically operates off the principle of least privilege, which states that users should only have access privileges essential to their job function.

To make IAM effective, companies need insight into activity on their networks and logs that contain evidence of who has attempted to access privileged accounts. System administrators should have controls in place to identify the types of users requesting account access and the information they provide as part of that request. Activity logs can also reveal evidence of multiple failed logins, remote logins or other behaviors that may be linked to malicious activity. User and entity behavior analytics can help network administrators understand normal and abnormal usage patterns and potentially reveal activity related to insider threats.