Centrify has selected Adelaide-based cybersecurity services provider Vectra Corporation as a reseller for its identity management platform in Australia and New Zealand.

Vectra said it saw a strong opportunity for Centrify’s suite of identity and access management and privileged identity management products in Australia, driven by rising demand following the introduction of the new Notifiable Data Breach law.

In addition, the firms will target financial services organisations seeking to reduce identity risk as the Federal Government-appointed Financial Services Royal Commission steps up its push to scrutinise the industry.

“Poor identity management is the cause of many data breaches, according to Verizon’s 2017 Data Breach Investigation Report, which reported that 81 percent of hacking-related breaches leveraged either stolen and/or weak passwords,” said Centrify.

Centrify said its own proposition, which brings together Identity-as-a-Service, enterprise mobility management and privileged access management capabilities, is used by some 5,000 organisations worldwide.

Centrify senior APAC sales director Niall King said Vectra had the experience and expertise to open new doors for the firm’s security platform in Australia and New Zealand. “Vectra can introduce Centrify to enterprise customers that can benefit from our identity management solutions,” he said. “Vectra’s strength in financial services will help [us] to extend its presence in that sector.”

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Meanwhile,Vectra Corporation MD Chris Smerdon said protecting identity was the key to security in the age of access. “It’s all about reducing risk without restricting access,” he explained, noting that Centrify’s platform assumes that users inside a network are no more trustworthy than those on the outside.

“For example, the current Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry is showing organisations that if they don’t understand their exposure to risk, they are inviting breaches to occur,” Smerdon added.

“You can see the long-term implications for executives in organisations who ignore that risk – heads will roll,” he said. “The large banks are quite concerned about what’s coming out of that process. As financial services organisations seek to mitigate their risk, we expect more and more security opportunities to come out of that process.”