By Jerome Becquart

In the nine years Axiad has been in business, there has been one constant: our customers are at the core of everything we do – throughout the life of any project.  But we worry that some companies may not realize just how closely they must monitor their approach to cybersecurity protection to keep up with the growing number (and complexity) of devices, processes, and systems coming into play. Therefore, we ask, “are you doing everything you can to mitigate your cybersecurity risks, even if you’ve adopted a cloud-based solution?”

When Axiad first started, we were a solutions integrator. Our approach was simple:

1. Start with our customers’ needs

2. Help our customers identify the best solution, leveraging our portfolio of product partners; and

3. Ensure our customers get excellent professional services.

Over time, we saw that many customers lacked the interest and/or capability to manage an on-premises solution. We decided to address this gap by building Axiad ID Cloud, our own cloud-based SaaS alternative. This was a natural outgrowth of our longstanding approach of understanding customers’ needs. We brought years of accumulated service expertise deploying and managing multi-factor authentication and identity assurance solutions to create a flexible, automated and scalable Cloud-based solution — and all of this without  compromising security.

As our cloud offering gained more traction, I was expecting our Professional Service activity to become less and less important. Gone is the need for: months-long implementations, staging in multiple environments, hardware deployments, complex key ceremonies and all this fun stuff. Since Axiad ID Cloud could get our customers service up and running in 42 minutes, I wondered what we would do with all our great consultants?

The truth is, the importance and the value of our service offering has instead been increasing.

The focus of our team has shifted from implementation services to users and applications enablement. Deploying MFA and PKI through the cloud removes a lot of the complexity and integration cost. However, making sure that users, machines, and interactions are protected across the whole eco system is more important than ever. Plus, the enterprise ecosystem is constantly evolving. This is where having a team of experts is critical. So much can go wrong.

Here are just a few thoughts on what  can make or break a project:

• When outlining business drivers and phasing, do you

  – define clear milestones & deliverables?

  – focus on the easy but high-value wins first, then build on the momentum?

• When managing user enablement, do you realize that

  – planning is a must to transition users from password or legacy MFA to a higher trust MFA solution without impacting productivity?

  – change – even positive change – always generates questions and friction?

  – defining the right approach along with a clear communication policy is key?

• When doing application and system enablement, do you understand that

  – managing and verifying the digital identities of a growing number of devices, systems, and applications interfacing and hosting corporate assets is a growing problem? Just knowing what these systems are and how users authenticate to them is a challenge.

  – once you’ve completed the inventory of digital identities, we can always work with you to recommend the best approach and technologies to secure all types of systems or applications.

All enablement tasks require constant attention. As more processes get automated and new systems come into play, enterprises are facing the need to establish and manage their digital Identities in new, but secure ways. Our team of experts helps mitigate risks for our customers by facilitating all these activities throughout the entire life of a project.

Focusing on our customer needs to remain, more than ever, core to Axiad values.

About the Author

Jerome Becquart, COO, Jerome has over 20 years of experience in identity and access management solutions, including 15 years at ActivIdentity. Jerome’s management experience includes roles in operational management, sales management, professional services, product and solution marketing, engineering, and technical support. After the acquisition of ActivIdentity by HID Global in 2010, Jerome served as general manager of the HID Identity Assurance business unit. He chaired the Global Platform Government Task Force for three years, and served on the board of directors of this Industry organization.