Avoiding an Identity Crisis: An Identity and Access Management Competency Model

Abstract

Identity and Access Management is a challenging profession. It is usually the first interaction of a new employee or customer experience with an organization and is often not smooth. From logging in to fill out a job application multiple times or providing a credit card to buy something online, identity and access management is vital to all digital transactions. Most often, nonidentity professionals are responsible for everyday identity tasks, leading to misconfigurations, suboptimal user experience, or potential data leakage. Even though identity and access management are knowledge domains of most major cybersecurity certifications, they are only mentioned in high-level concepts instead of at a tactical level. This creates a disconnect between available academic education and training resources to organizational needs of an identity and access management professional. Additionally, human resource professionals and program managers lack the resources to identify Identity and Access Management tasks, knowledge, and skills. This study aims to create an Identity and Access Management competency model to help mature identity as a profession within cybersecurity.