#IdentityManagementDay Interview: Julie Smith, Executive Director, IDSA Cyber-criminals have increasingly sought to leverage identity in order to gain access to organizations’ sensitive information over recent years. This can partly be attributed to enhancements in cybersecurity tools, making direct attacks against businesses harder, and also growing digitization, particularly since the start of COVID-19 pandemic, which provides more opportunities to compromise online accounts. Despite this trend, poor access management practices remain prevalent, which make such approaches fruitful for cyber-villains. Just last week, a survey published by the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) found that large numbers of Brits use easily guessable passwords, such as pet names and names of family members: information that can often be discovered quickly online. Additionally, numerous studies have shown that within organizations, privileged access is given to a high number of employees who do not require it. This means if their accounts are compromised, high level data breaches can take place.