Church & Dwight [NYSE: CHD]

David Ortiz

Identity Security Authority

David Ortiz operates as the CISO at Church & Dwight. With more than two decades of experience in the information security space, he focuses on revitalizing the company's global enterprise-wide information security program. His direct responsibilities also include risk management, compliance, data protection, cyber security operations, architecture, and Identity and Access Management (IAM). Additionally, he is entitled to safeguard corporate and manufacturing plant information assets.

Ortiz also has proven experience in advancing businesses' cloud-first strategy and promoting a strong foundation of security in the cloud with the right utilization of identity management and data protection controls.

What, according to you, are some of the major pain points when it comes to the Identity and Access Management (IAM) space?

In today's business world, it has become essential for businesses to properly manage user identities and access levels and safeguard important systems and data. However, at present, having an Identity and Access Management (IAM) strategy that reinforces the least privileged access approach and uses software and tools to support the strategy, not as the strategy is the most prominent challenge. It depends on where a company is in its IAM journey and its maturity level. Are they in the beginning stages with their authentication methods, device compliance, and network segmentation or are they matureand taking advantage of user and behavior analytics? The strategy needs to consider the company’s migration to the cloud as well as supporting legacy on-premise systems and applications. Additionally, vendors promising a comprehensive solution for all identity and access needs should be heeded with caution.

What are the latest developments or recent trends in the market?

Two trends immediately come to mind.

1. Solutions with conditional and risk-based policies are leading the way.The need for smarter access control to differentiate real from fake user traffic as malicious actors continue to try andoutpace legitimate users.

2. The approach to have therightcomplement of access management, authorization,and security edge tools. Cloud applications are using a modernrisk-based authentication approach and legacy systems and applications are taking advantage of recent edge gateway and access broker security tools thus complementing one another.

“At present, choosing the right Identity and Access Management (IAM) strategy is the most prominent challenge”

Presently, I am part of a project aimed to make employee onboarding, offboarding, and roll change capabilities efficient with automation. Following this, we aspire to have a strong foundation with a single source of identity truth from our Human Resource system

The project is aimed to serve as a one-stop-shop for all needs of on-premise and cloud-based users. Furthermore, upfront access control for all sanctioned applications and proper user-application network segmentation is going to be considered for ensuring privileged access.   

How do you envision the future of the identity and access management space? 

The IAM space will under go an evolution to recognize zero trust as a paradigm and not a single solution. Moreover, vendors will support the idea of a strong foundation for least privilege access at the application layer. Key vendors will update their product roadmap, aiming to continue rationalizing and consolidating with other vendors in the identity space to deliver on this.

What advice do you want to give your colleagues for their professional field?

The advice is to stick to the basicsand serve customers with proper principles relating to confidentiality, integrity, availability, authentication, and authorization. A strong foundation must be included within every operation to ensure maximum workflow automation, alignment with security operations, and user behavior analytics.