Across the enterprise, departments are placing increased demands on their organization’s data to enable multi-AI agents. It’s the IT operations (IT ops) department’s challenge to deliver the optimal environment for agentic AI to eventually bring business value.

Enterprises are grappling with a volatile, uncertain business climate – and to address this, they are increasingly turning to their data to draw actionable insights that enable competitive advantages through agents.

As networks grow more complex and the demands on them increase, IT ops departments need to develop better tools, including multi-AI agent systems to enhance the decision-making process by making recommendations aligned to set business goals.

Properly designed and implemented agentic AI solutions are game-changers – but IT ops must be prepared to take advantage of these powerful tools, which requires a well-crafted plan and a partner that can deliver more than just the technology.

The IT ops imperative

In conversations with IT professionals, my Capgemini colleagues and I have identified a number of common challenges for IT operations at enterprises across all sectors. Simply stated, IT professionals are under pressure to boost service performance while reining in costs – including operating expenses and costs for infrastructure and cloud services. They’re also under pressure to better identify, provision, and deploy the solutions required to allow other departments to take advantage of emerging technologies such as agentic AI.

The organization’s own data is an important source of the information required to help IT professionals achieve these goals. Unfortunately, legacy business intelligence systems often fail to satisfy their needs. There are several reasons for this:

• Analytics systems rarely support strategic foresight and transformative innovation – instead providing business users with yet another dashboard.
• The results are often, at best, a topic for discussion at the next team meeting – not sufficient for a decision-maker to act upon immediately and with confidence.
• Systems typically fail to personalize their output to provide insights contextualized for the person viewing them – instead offering a generic, unsatisfying result.
• Systems often aggregate data within silos, which means their output still requires additional interpretation to be valuable.

In short, many legacy systems miss the big picture, miss actionable meaning, miss the persona – and miss the point.

Based on my experience, I recommend an organization address this through multi-AI agent systems.

With the introduction of Gen AI Strategic Intelligence System by Capgemini, this could be the very system that bridges the gap between the old way, and a value-driven future. This system converts the vast amounts of data generated by each client, across their enterprise, into actionable insights. It is agentic: it operates continuously and is capable of independent decision-making, planning, and execution without human supervision. This agentic AI solution examines its own work to identify ways to improve it rather than simply responding to prompts. It’s also able to collaborate with multiple AI agents with specialized roles, to engage in more complex problem-solving and deliver better results.

How would organizations potentially go about doing this?   

Define the technology and business KPIs

First, organizations must establish well-defined KPIs and associated roadmaps to take full advantage of agentic AI recommendations – KPIs that align technology with business objectives.

This starts by identifying the end goals – the core business objectives and associated KPIs relevant to IT operations. These represent the IT operation’s key activities that support other departments as they contribute to the organization’s value, and strengthening them is always a smart exercise. The good news is that even small improvements to any of these KPIs can deliver enormous benefits.

The roadmap should leverage pre-existing AI models to generate predictive insights. It should also ensure scalability, reliability, and manageability of all AI agents – not just within the realm of IT operations, but throughout the organization. And it should be designed to leverage domain-centric data products from disparate enterprise resource planning and IT systems.

Finally, the roadmap must identify initiatives to ensure the quality and reliability of the organization’s data by pursuing best-in-class data strategies. These include:

• Deploying the right platform to build secure, reliable, and scalable solutions
• Implementing an enterprise-wide governance framework
• Establishing the guardrails that protect data privacy, define how generative AI can be used, and shield brand reputation

Choose a partner that delivers more than tech

Second, the organization must engage the right strategic partner. While innovative agentic AI systems are essential, that partner must also be able to support the IT team with business transformation expertise and industry-specific knowledge.

Capgemini leverages its technology expertise, its partnerships with all major platform providers, and its experience across multiple industrial sectors to design, deliver, and support agentic AI strategies and solutions that are secure, reliable, and tailored to the unique needs of its clients.

Capgemini’s solution draws upon the client’s data ecosystem to perform root cause analysis of KPI changes, and then generates prescriptive recommendations and next-best actions – tailored to each persona within the IT department. The result is goal-oriented insights aligned with business objectives, ready to help IT empower the organization through actionable roadmaps for sustainable growth and competitive advantage.

*Meaningful, measurable benefits

Capgemini estimates that with the right implementation and support, the potential benefits include augmenting the IT workforce through autonomous processing, touchless data crunching, improved data and systems integrations, continuous monitoring of controls and compliance, and real-time access to reports and insights.

The potential for IT operations to translate these internal gains into meaningful advantages for other departments across the enterprise means that leveraging agentic AI for its own strategic insights cannot be ignored.

^*Results based on industry benchmarks and observed outcomes from similar initiatives with clients. Individual results will vary.

The Gen AI Strategic Intelligence System by Capgemini works across all industrial sectors, and integrates seamlessly with various corporate domains. Download our PoV here to learn more or contact our below expert if you would like to discuss this further.

Businesses must migrate away from legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) and towards cloud-enabled ERP.

The business world is changing. Technology moves swiftly, and users want their software to reflect this. Enterprises need to maintain a continuous view of software, as small updates are released at a steady drip instead of one large, yearly update. But business continuity is a hard ask when legacy systems can’t keep up with the barrage of new features and functionality offered by regular updates.

This means businesses must migrate away from legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) and towards cloud-enabled ERP. This will guarantee agility and the ability to scale and implement changes without disruptions, ensuring continuity for the business and the end user. 

However, this is usually easier said than done. Working with the cloud is highly technical, and businesses often don’t have the people who possess the skills and know-how to enable cloud migration. And it’s a large buy-in with a slow return on investment, making it an unattractive option for many. 

There are also operational hurdles, like how do you enable ongoing end-user adoption and solution changes? How do you adopt a flexible operating and resourcing model? Dual maintenance also causes issues in keeping current upgraded and development systems in sync with each other. And the overall adoption process is a hassle because of licensing, migration, and infrastructure operations that need to be maintained.  

To support the migration process, businesses often turn to RISE with SAP, an AI-powered cloud ERP. It guarantees agility and the ability to scale and implement changes without disruptions. But to exploit RISE with SAP to its fullest, there are certain challenges that customers have when it comes to adoption. This includes monitoring, which requires expertise from a business and technology perspective, as well as several other key services. A reliable application development and maintenance (ADM) partner can assist businesses with overcoming those hurdles while maintaining business continuity.

Business observability and continuous monitoring

Businesses can’t improve upon what they don’t measure, so an integrated approach that enables unconstrained application availability and gathers useful data at the same time is necessary. 

ADM partners can create these monitoring dashboards with embedded capability for observability and continuous, proactive, end-to-end monitoring. With 24/7 availability, it can correlate alerts and generate tickets across the scope of SAP systems and edge software, such as regional warehouse control systems or operational technology (OT) platforms. This continuous monitoring through various channels means that issues can be flagged and fixed before they become bigger incidents.  

Continuous value delivery 

To ensure software delivers continuous value, there needs to be a loop of people – and process-driven transformation, enabled by a constant cycle of maintain, optimize, run. An ADM partner can support this cycle at several checkpoints with a focus on business continuity. The cycle focuses on target operating models that are designed for the future and centered on people and technology.  

Continuous organizational change management (OCM) will ensure both people and processes are prepared for new ways of working, both for the current environment while also preparing them for the future, including off and onboarding. To support continuous OCM and drive awareness and engagement, processes can be updated with new technology and automation that’s supported by structured end-user adoption through Enablement-as-a-Service (EaaS) capability powered by SAP Enable Now but managed by your ADM partner. 

Continuous end-user enablement 

Once a new feature is implemented, it’s important to ensure that end users are using it correctly. Your ADM partner can administer digital adoption by fully managing the end-to-end learning journey for all users. The process is structured so that the business can focus on getting their workers up to speed and manage everything from go-live to decommissioning. This is all so that the focus remains on core value activities instead of worrying about their ERP. 

Continuous quality assurance 

Quality assurance must be at the heart of a stable, resilient RISE with SAP environment. Upgrading legacy ERP architecture and databases to a managed SAP S/4HANA platform brings users a lot of benefits but there are risks inherent in this increased level of change. With an ADM partner at your side, these inherent risks will be managed, along with continuous quality assurance to ensure continuous service delivery. 

Continuity is key 

Adopting a continuous delivery approach to RISE with SAP with a trusted ADM partner gives clear segregation of responsibilities and ownership and enables not only business continuity but a clear path towards a renewable enterprise.  

As one of the largest and most experienced SAP systems integrators, and with market-leading ADM capabilities, Capgemini can further simplify the business transformation possibilities enabled by RISE with SAP. Find out more about our ADMnext for SAP solutions here.

Climate change isn’t a distant threat—it’s a reality to deal with now.

Businesses need to rethink how they operate, especially when it comes to supply chains, which are crucial for global trade. Just like in the movie Interstellar, where survival depended on data, AI, and adaptability, today’s supply chains need to be flexible and smart to handle disruptions and climate challenges. AI-powered insights and actions are like the movie’s robot TARS: helping predict risks, optimize logistics, and reduce waste. Data ensures that every decision is as precise as a gravity equation. AI enhances precision in supply chains by analyzing vast data in real time, predicting risks, and optimizing logistics. It’s the key to transforming supply chains into smarter, greener, and more resilient systems that balance profitability with ecological responsibility.

Supply chains aren’t just stretched — they’re under siege. Disruption is no longer the exception; it’s the norm. That’s why resilience — the ability to anticipate, adapt, and recover fast — has shifted from nice-to-have to non-negotiable. A recent report from The Business Continuity Institute delivers the reality check: 80% of organizations faced supply chain disruptions last year, most more than once. That’s an uptick despite better planning — proof that we’re still reacting more than we’re preparing. Meanwhile, sustainability pressures are mounting. With supply chains responsible for over 60% of global carbon emissions, according to the World Economic Forum, they’re no longer just operational engines — they’re climate liabilities too.

Let’s face it—what we’re doing right now isn’t cutting it. The cracks in our supply chains are showing, and incremental fixes won’t be enough. It’s time for bold moves. If we want supply chains that can truly withstand shocks and stay ahead of the curve, we need to lean into smarter, faster, more adaptive solutions. That’s where AI steps in—not just as a tool, but as a game-changer. With its ability to forecast disruptions, optimize operations, and accelerate response times, AI is shaping the supply chains of the future. To stay ahead, companies must embrace green supply chain management (GSCM), where sustainability is built into every step. AI supercharges this shift, turning GSCM into a smart, data-driven engine. From cutting carbon to driving circular economies, AI enables supply chains that are not just efficient, but truly green.

Resilience, Not Yet Autonomous: Supply Chains Still Heavily Rely on People

Supply chains are navigating a perfect storm: geopolitical instability, extreme weather, shifting consumer expectations — and growing uncertainty in global trade. Disruptions are no longer outliers; they’re part of the operating environment. While many organizations are embedding risk management into supply chain strategy, execution is still stuck in manual mode. Too much effort goes into collecting, cleaning, and stitching together data — leaving little room for insight, foresight, or speed. AI and machine learning are still underused, and critical response actions often rely on human intervention alone. The result? Slow reactions, mounting workloads, and talent focused on firefighting instead of forward-thinking.

What’s missing? Technology that doesn’t just capture and store data, but actively turns it into prescriptive insights and clear, actionable recommendations. Unfortunately, most tools in the market today still fall short of that promise. Instead, businesses are left stitching together manual processes and siloed teams to make sense of a rapidly changing environment. To build truly resilient supply chains, we need to shift from reactive, human-heavy models to intelligent, tech-augmented systems. The future isn’t about replacing people—it’s about empowering them with tools that amplify their decision-making, speed up response times, and free them to focus on what matters most.

Greening the Chain: How AI and Data are Changing the Game

Data and AI are at the core of this transformation, delivering unmatched insights, predictive accuracy, and optimization potential. By leveraging real-time data and predictive analytics, AI can identify potential risks—such as supplier delays, extreme weather, or geopolitical issues—before they impact operations. This early warning capability allows businesses to proactively mitigate threats through alternative sourcing, dynamic rerouting, or inventory adjustments. AI also enables scenario modeling, helping organizations test various disruption scenarios and build contingency plans with data-backed confidence. As a result, companies can maintain continuity, reduce downtime, and ensure customer satisfaction, even in the face of unexpected challenges. In today’s volatile global environment, AI is no longer a luxury but a critical enabler of resilient and future-ready supply chains.

AI-enhanced supply chain resilience framework

The AI-enhanced supply chain resilience framework strengthens supply chain agility and robustness by harnessing advanced AI technologies. It integrates real-time data from IoT devices into a centralized system for comprehensive analysis. Through predictive analytics and machine learning, the framework forecasts demand and detects potential risks—like supplier disruptions or market shifts—enabling proactive risk mitigation and smarter decisions in areas like inventory and logistics.

AI-driven communication tools improve collaboration with suppliers and stakeholders, ensuring seamless, transparent information flow. Continuous monitoring and adaptive feedback loops allow the supply chain to respond swiftly to changing conditions, driving ongoing improvement and innovation. By adopting this framework, businesses gain end-to-end visibility, reduce vulnerabilities, and ensure operational continuity—ultimately building a more resilient and high-performing supply chain.

Leveraging AI enables businesses to streamline operations, improve efficiency, cut costs, and elevate customer experiences. One powerful application is demand forecasting, where AI analyzes historical data to accurately predict customer needs. This leads to smarter inventory management—minimizing overstock and stockouts while optimizing capital use. Another key use case is route optimization. AI-driven tools evaluate factors like weather, traffic, and transport costs to determine the most efficient delivery paths. This reduces time and expenses while ensuring faster, more reliable service that meets growing customer expectations.

How organizations can harness it effectively:

According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), 55% of Forbes Global 2000 OEMs are projected to have revamped their service supply chains with AI and by 2026, 60% of Asia based 2000 companies will use generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools to support core supply chain processes as well as dynamic supply chain design and will leverage AI to reduce operating costs by 5%. This signifies a widespread adoption of AI to improve efficiency and gain a competitive advantage in supply chain management. Further, Generative AI can be harnessed to monitor global events and proactively identify emerging risks. It can automatically generate risk assessments, simulate scenarios, and suggest strategic mitigation plans—empowering supply chain teams to manage risks more effectively. Its conversational interface enhances user experience and accelerates response times. Over time, this evolves into a system-guided, data-driven approach, drawing from a rich library of scenarios and mitigation strategies to deliver contextual, timely responses to risk events.

Considering all of the facts

The fusion of data and AI isn’t just a tech upgrade — it’s a strategic shift for building supply chains that can bend without breaking. Organizations that embed intelligence into their operations now won’t just survive the next disruption — they’ll lead the transition to greener, faster, more adaptive ecosystems. By 2025, global supply chains will be reengineered out of necessity and powered by innovation. AI won’t just help companies — it will help nations stay resilient, competitive, and climate-conscious. It will redefine how we make, move, and manage everything. And like TARS in Interstellar, the most effective systems won’t just follow instructions — they’ll anticipate, adapt, and act as true copilots. What supply chains need now isn’t just visibility. It’s vision.

Start innovating now –

Give Your Supply Chain an AI-enabled Sixth Sense

• Plug your supply chain into real-time feeds—from IoT sensors to storm trackers—and let AI act like your all-seeing oracle. Spot trouble (like delayed shipments or political curveballs) before it hits the fan

Make Generative AI Your Strategic Co-Pilot

• Leverage Generative AI to generate real-time risk assessments, simulate disruption scenarios, and recommend mitigation strategies, all in a conversational interface

Build a Digital Twin—Your Virtual Supply Chain Lab

• Think of it as a flight simulator for your supply chain. A digital twin lets you mirror operations in a virtual space to test “what-if” scenarios—from port delays to carbon constraints—without breaking a sweat in real life.

Interesting read? Capgemini’s Innovation publication, Data-powered Innovation Review – Wave 10 features more such captivating innovation articles with contributions from leading experts from Capgemini. Explore the transformative potential of generative AI, data platforms, and sustainability-driven tech. Find all previous Waves here.  Find all previous Waves here.

We are proud to share that Capgemini has been recognized as a Leader in Avasant’s Cybersecurity Services 2025 RadarView™ – an achievement that reflects our relentless commitment to helping clients build secure, resilient, and future-ready enterprises. 

This recognition is more than a milestone – it’s a powerful validation of our ability to deliver continuous cyber resilience through our robust cybersecurity portfolio that is aligned with our clients’ evolving business and regulatory needs.

Avasant’s comprehensive evaluation of global service providers is based on innovation, capabilities, and industry impact, and placed Capgemini at the forefront. Our leadership position is a direct result of our strategic investments, innovation-led approach, and ability to scale cyber defense solutions globally. 

Empowering clients with continuous resilience 

At Capgemini, cybersecurity is foundational to continuous business resilience. Our end-to-end security services are designed not only to protect, but to enable our clients to anticipate, withstand, and rapidly recover from disruption – ensuring continuity and confidence in an unpredictable world. 

Avasant’s assessment highlights our strengths in zero trust architecture, secure cloud transformation, AI-driven threat intelligence, and our global cyber defense center networks. These capabilities power an integrated and proactive security approach that ensures organizations stay secure and resilient – always. 

Sector-specific cyber innovation 

Our differentiated approach includes industry-specific solutions tailored to the complex needs of highly regulated and high-impact sectors: 

• OT/IoT security in manufacturing, energy and utilities: Securing manufacturing environments from design to deployment, including implementing industrial-grade frameworks across 300+ sites with IEC 62443 alignment. 

• Financial services: Leveraging a best-of-platform approach to drive security consolidation and compliance automation. 

• Connected healthcare and automotive: Ensuring secure innovation across medical devices, vehicles, and 5G ecosystems. 

• Aerospace, oil and gas: Establishing 24×7 SOCs, improving cyber maturity by 95 percent, and delivering integrated IT/OT threat intelligence. 

We’re also shaping future-ready security through pioneering engagements – like our quantum cryptography roadmap for a European bank, developed with our Quantum Lab and Cambridge Consultants. 

The road ahead 

Our promise to clients is simple: cybersecurity that enables sustainable transformation and continuous resilience. Every investment we make, every partnership we build, and every capability we evolve is designed to deliver on that promise. 

This leadership ranking from Avasant reinforces our purpose. As threats grow in complexity and the pace of change accelerates, we will continue to be the trusted partner that helps clients move forward with security, agility, and confidence. 

Click here to read the excerpt. 

Contact Capgemini to understand how we are uniquely positioned to help you structure cybersecurity strength from the ground up.  

As security data volumes continue to grow, organizations face the dual challenge of retaining data for long periods while managing storage costs. Microsoft Sentinel Data Lake addresses this with the introduction of a new cold storage tier – an innovation that brings flexibility, scalability, and cost-efficiency to security data management.

Understanding the cold storage tier

The cold storage tier is designed for long-term retention of infrequently accessed data. It complements the existing hot and warm tiers, enabling organizations to implement a tiered storage strategy that aligns with their operational and compliance needs. With seamless transitions between tiers, security teams can access historical data when needed without incurring high costs.

This is particularly valuable for industries with stringent regulatory requirements or those conducting forensic investigations. Cold storage ensures that data remains accessible and secure, even years after it was collected.

Benefits for security operations

The new storage tier offers several advantages:

• Significant cost savings for long-term data retention
• Simplified compliance with data governance policies
• On-demand access to archived data for threat hunting and analysis.

By optimizing storage costs, organizations can allocate more resources to proactive security measures and advanced analytics.

Capgemini’s MXDR services: Maximizing storage efficiency

Capgemini’s MXDR services are uniquely positioned to take advantage of Sentinel’s new storage capabilities. Through its Cyber Defense Centers, Capgemini helps clients implement intelligent data retention strategies that balance performance and cost.
With the cold storage tier, Capgemini can:

• Store historical telemetry for extended periods without budget strain
• Enable retrospective threat analysis and compliance audits over longer periods of time
• Integrate storage policies with real-time monitoring and response workflows.

This holistic approach ensures that clients not only meet regulatory requirements but also enhance their overall security posture.

Strategic value for the future

The addition of cold storage to Microsoft Sentinel Data Lake is more than a technical upgrade – it’s a strategic enabler. It empowers organizations to retain valuable data, derive insights from it, and respond to threats with greater agility. When combined with Capgemini’s MXDR expertise, the result is a powerful, cost-effective solution for modern security operations.

As highlighted in our Top Tech Trends of 2025 report, cybersecurity remains a critical focus with new defenses and emerging threats reshaping the landscape.

One of the most pressing concerns is the quantum cyber threat, which demands immediate attention and action

While less visible than artificial intelligence, quantum computing is advancing just as rapidly. In early 2025, Microsoft and Amazon both unveiled quantum processors with self-correcting capabilities, marking a decisive step towards stable, industrial-grade machines. The horizon for quantum computing is becoming clearer and closer, bringing with it the reality of threats that we must now seriously prepare for.

Cryptography in Danger

One of the strengths of quantum computing is its ability to perform massive calculations in parallel, significantly reducing the time required. This could enable, for example, the creation of highly targeted deepfakes from minimal data, which could be a formidable weapon in the wrong hands. However, the most significant threat concerns cryptography. While the security of commonly used asymmetric encryption algorithms today relies on the fact that it would take classical computers thousands of years to break them, a quantum machine could do it in just a few hours. This means all our data, communications, and authentication systems would become immediately vulnerable. In the post-quantum world, no identity, communication, or transaction can be guaranteed if it remains encrypted as it is today.

This risk is not a fantasy. The algorithms that underpin it have been ready for a long time, and their performance has been mathematically demonstrated. What is missing today are sufficiently stable and industrialized quantum machines. Recent announcements show that they will arrive not in ten, fifteen, or twenty years, but much sooner. And once available, they will be accessible to everyone via the cloud, as current quantum processors, despite their limitations, already are. Hackers are ready, the entry cost will be low, and as soon as the platforms are available, the risk will materialize massively and immediately.

An Already Present Risk

The threat is therefore major and imminent. It is even already present, as malicious actors can store encrypted data they collect today to decrypt it when they have the capability. In five years, most long-term strategic information, financial assets, health data, industrial, diplomatic, or military secrets will still be of great value. The issue is similar in all sectors whose products have a long lifespan and incorporate digital technology: defense, aerospace, transportation, energy, health… This strategy, known as “harvest now, decrypt later,” is a proven reality, with many states acknowledging that they practice it in long-term judicial investigations.

At some level, all organizations will be affected, from SMEs to multinationals, from local authorities to government ministries. In France more than elsewhere, very few have yet realized this, and even fewer have started to implement appropriate measures.

Overhauling Trust Systems

We can, and must, prepare now for this major cryptographic challenge, which will require nothing less than a complete overhaul of all trust systems: directories, APIs, certificates, storage, networks, application development… It will be a considerable project with major operational impacts that cannot be improvised in an emergency. It is necessary to start by scrutinizing the IT system to identify and assess risks, then prioritize interventions, allocate budgets, implement, test, and deploy solutions, manage change, coordinate with partners and suppliers… And it will be impossible to compress all this into a few weeks or months when the threat materializes.

Fortunately, technological countermeasures are being put in place. After a long competition, the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) has approved encryption algorithms (five to date) capable of resisting quantum computers. Or rather, they are resistant based on current knowledge, which means that a certain cryptographic agility will be necessary in case they too are eventually broken. In France, several startups and large companies offer solutions in this area. It is also possible to implement hybrid encryption solutions to protect data against both today’s classical threats and tomorrow’s quantum threats. Finally, another area of study, still experimental, concerns the physical security of communications with QKD (Quantum Key Distribution), which provides absolute certainty that exchanges have not been intercepted.

For once, action must be taken without waiting for explicit regulatory pressure. While ANSSI has been warning about the quantum risk since 2022, these warnings are not yet accompanied by any obligations, not even for OIVs. However, texts like NIS 2, DORA, or GDPR hold leaders accountable without specifying the technical nature of the threats. In other words, an organization subject to such regulations will have no excuse if its data is stolen and decrypted by a quantum computer. In the face of the quantum threat, denial, skepticism, or inaction are no longer acceptable, especially in the current security and geopolitical context.

Click here to know more about our Quantum Lab.

As identity and password-based cyberattacks increase, the urgency grows for clients to migrate from legacy identity solutions quickly as they transition to zero trust and start adopting AI, while protecting themselves from sophisticated cyberattacks. At Capgemini, we know identity governance, security, and productivity can align through innovation, but the process of selecting, procuring, and implementing effective solutions can take years, while the challenges are here and now.

Identity tool sprawl has created overlapping policies, features, and functionalities. Managing legacy on-prem identity technology alongside cloud identity continues to be a difficult area to manage and requires fresh thinking to navigate through today’s identity security challenges. 

Organizations need to consolidate and standardize identity governance and automation for productivity at speed, so that their security teams to have the best chance of protecting the identity attack surface, fast.

Risk through complexity

The identity lifecycle’s complexity, and risk to security, often only becomes apparent during breaches when a rogue identity can gain permission, explore the network, and find crucial unsecured systems and datastores to expose, export, or encrypt. Security risks come from all angles as we try to accommodate internal and external collaboration needs, machine and human identities, JML journeys, and privileged access.

Good control over the identity and access management lifecycles is possible, but needs strong, automated policies and procedures and a transparent control plane.

Multiple requirements across different personas

Mature organizations will have well-structured identity data stores, constructed so that personas and other logical groups of entities are well-defined and can be administered and controlled according to local criteria defining what they can or cannot do. 

Privileged identity management and conditional access policies need to be in place to ensure that access to privileged resources is controlled and that a zero-trust ethos pervades across the organization.

Recertification campaigns back this up, ensuring access is restricted to personas who still need it and automatically removed from those who don’t. Segregation of duties policies prevent dangerous combinations of permissions and help demonstrate good governance to auditors.

Managing third-party identities can be especially challenging, but there are cross-cloud tools available that can bring it back under control, ensuring that “3P” identities can be monitored, recertified, and automatically removed from your AD when they leave the provider, along with any permissions they held.

But getting all of this in place in a reasonable timeframe can seem overwhelming.

Capgemini’s new Microsoft Entra FastTrack

Increasingly Capgemini is contacted by organizations, often already on the Microsoft platform, seeking advice on rapidly implementable solutions to these IAM security challenges, especially as the cybersecurity world changes quickly around us. Responding to this demand, Capgemini has developed a Microsoft Entra-specific version of our tried and tested FastTrack assessment methodology.

Today, many organizations use Microsoft Entra tools, even if only as the main corporate Active Directory. While many CISOs rely on this as the organization’s main identity store and authentication and authorization mechanism, they do not necessarily understand the extent to which Entra can be used as a tool to enforce good governance of identity and access management processes and that there may be an opportunity to exploit or extend existing capability to fulfill their requirements.

With the frequency of cyber-attacks on the rise it is becoming increasingly important that organisations are able to respond to the threat landscape as quickly as possible, preferably using existing tools and minimising disruption to collaboration and mission-critical business functions. In many cases, Entra, with its widespread adoption and multi-use-case capability, may be the best option to fulfil these criteria.

Launched recently, our Entra FastTrack analyzes an organization’s current state of IAM maturity, assesses its requirements, and creates a detailed report and roadmap based on the exploitation or extension of existing Microsoft Entra assets, leading to the right path to security and compliance fast, without the need to spend months or years reaching for new solutions.

This FastTrack leverages Capgemini’s long history delivering Microsoft implementations across multiple sectors, allowing us to bring our own real-world experience and recommendations to the delivery, and accelerating the migration away from existing legacy infrastructure.

Conclusion

Capgemini’s new Microsoft Entra FastTrack could be your organization’s best and fastest way to improving your IAM and IGA processes and securing your assets against cyberattacks, without the need for expensive research and deployment of new solutions.