Increases in remote working and cloud migration mean managing user access has become more critical than ever. Granting excessive access to users or not revoking access when employees leave can lead to security and compliance risks. Immature organizations grant access randomly, while slightly more mature companies struggle with manual processes, which are inefficient and prone to human error. A dedicated solution and defined procedures are essential to managing user identities effectively.
In this blog, we explore the potential dangers of poor identity management and explain how an Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) solution can prevent security and compliance issues while improving IT and user productivity.
There are three main challenges facing organizations that an IGA solution can help address:
An IGA solution ensures that employees, third-party contractors, customers and other users have the right access to the right resources to do their jobs and no more. You need to grant users the right access to perform their roles effectively. However, granting them too much access presents potential security and compliance risks. An IGA deployment has a variety of modules that automate the management of this delicate balance.
Only 37% of organizations are confident or very confident that they can immediately remove access once an employee leaves their organization.
An IGA solution automates the join-move-leave processes of managing users' access to digital assets throughout their employment or contract. It provisions access to the applications and resources required for new starters based on their role and other contexts. It also changes access for users who change roles or departments and deprovisions access for leavers. Integrating an IGA solution with an authoritative source, such as an HR database, frees up IT resources while ensuring quick access rights changes for users.
Organizations grant new starters initial access rights based on their roles. As employees progress or students continue their studies, they may need additional access rights. Manual requests for more access are inefficient and slow and can result in security risks if the organization grants permissions incorrectly. An IGA solution offers self-service access requests, automated approval workflows, and automated access provisioning. The administrator sets up these automatic processes based on workflows and rulesets to control access levels, approvers, and provisioning.
To support your organization's security, compliance, and efficiency needs, an IGA solution must align with your organizational structure. This involves managing roles and policies to match the business.
Roles define a collection of permissions or entitlements assigned to users based on their job responsibilities. For example, an accountant role could include access to email, a shared drive, printing services, and the company accounting software. It is essential to review roles regularly to ensure they are still accurate and aligned with business needs.
Policy management involves defining, implementing, and enforcing policies that govern the management of digital identities and access to resources. Effective policy management helps minimize the risk of security and compliance breaches and data loss.
50% of organizations are not confident that their users have suitable access to applications according to their job role.
Access certification is crucial for validating and certifying user access rights to ensure they align with security policies and compliance regulations. IGA solutions request business application owners or managers to review user access rights and either approve or reject them. This process helps identify and eliminate access-related risks, ensuring employees have appropriate access to applications and data.
Separation of Duties is also vital. An IGA solution allows you to define and implement policies to separate critical functions among different individuals or departments, reducing the risk of fraud, errors, and security breaches.
IGA solutions provide many benefits for organizations, including:
As digitization projects increase, remote work becomes more common, and applications move to the cloud, organizations can no longer rely on manual processes to ensure users have access to the right resources.
An effective IGA implementation helps organizations to be secure and compliant while replacing their manual processes with streamlining workflows that increase productivity for both IT teams and employees.
Learn more about how IGA solutions (like Fastpath) can do to help by watching our recent webinar.