With regulatory compliance and industry mandates focusing on data privacy, identity governance solutions help lower risks, boost performance, increase security, and meet audit requirements. These tools focus on account and credential management, entitlement management, access requests, certifications, and more.
The best IGA solutions support centralized policies that automate processes across diverse applications and authentication methods. These tools leverage least privilege best practices to improve access management and reduce risk.
Role-Based Access Management
Role-based access management (RBAC) is a business framework for defining and managing access privileges based on a specific job function. Users are assigned roles, allowing them to access the necessary files, systems, and services required for their duties within the organization. This helps eliminate the need to manage permissions on a granular level, which is time-consuming and can lead to mistakes. It also makes it easier to achieve compliance with privacy, security, and other regulatory standards.
When an end-user logs into the company network, the RBAC system checks that role, then grants them access based on the associated privileges. Then the system monitors operations and objects the user interacts with during their session, logging and analyzing all activity until the session ends.
While IGA and PAM have many uses, Delinea focuses on identity governance solutions that provide better visibility into identities and access privileges across the entire organization. IGA and PAM are tightly integrated with role-based access control, which allows them to determine appropriate access for privileged identities based on their context.
While it is possible to have overlapping privileges, this can confuse the user and cause security vulnerabilities. A good IGA solution will prevent these risks by enforcing the separation of duties. As employees change jobs or leave the organization, it is important that the IGA solution can easily update permissions and access rights.
Micro-Certifications
The ability to uplift employee capabilities through micro-credentials is a key component of the digital workplace. A micro-credential is a verified and branded piece of evidence that supports the skills, knowledge and abilities that a learner has achieved. The evidence can be presented in an online portfolio, LinkedIn profile or personal website. Micro-credentials are a great way for learners to show employers the skills acquired through online learning, particularly when reputable trade or technical associations award these credentials.
Identity governance and administration (IGA) tools monitor and enforce IAM policies to ensure users access only authorized resources. Part of the basics of identity governance solutions is automating access reviews and providing reporting to support compliance and security objectives. They are designed to manage user accounts, roles, and permissions, identify unauthorized activities, create alerts, analyze risk, and terminate access upon severance.
Automated micro-certifications, a feature within leading IGA tools, allow organizations to continuously monitor users’ access to resources and take action immediately when access policies are violated. For example, suppose an accountant needs elevated permissions to publish a financial report promptly but is unexpectedly out of the office. If the accountant has accessed this system outside of the normal IGA process (commonly referred to as out-of-band access), the IGA solution would detect this and trigger an automated micro-certification, which notifies application owners and initiates a limited access review focused on the specific change to the user’s privileges.
Automated Access Reviews
User access reviews (UARs) are a critical component of IAM. They are designed to periodically verify that only the right people can access your business’s systems, data and applications. This is an important control because unauthorized access can expose sensitive data, compromise your network, or enable a cyberattack. UARs are also required by industry standards and regulations like HIPAA, PCI DSS, CMMC, and SOX.
Performing an access review manually requires a lot of time and can be complicated because you need to look at every one of your employees’ permissions for each app they have access. This is why many businesses need to catch up on their UARs and are at risk of a cyberattack or failing to meet compliance requirements.
IGA solutions can make this process easier and faster by automating the UARs, and providing an intuitive and easy-to-use interface for access reviews. These solutions offer a bird’s eye view of multiple platforms in a single hub, which makes it easier to spot abnormal platform behavior and reduces the risk of entitlement creep.
In addition, these solutions help with identifying users who are potentially at risk by automatically alerting managers and application owners when they have access beyond their normal role. This can save valuable time for the IT and security teams and give them greater confidence in meeting their UAR compliance commitments.
Data Privacy
IGA solutions allow organizations to streamline the provisioning, password management, policy management, and access governance processes across the business. This helps reduce the number of errors and privileged access breaches caused by manual processes.
These systems also provide better visibility into roles, privileges, and access rights — allowing security teams to quickly recognize unusual patterns that may signal a data breach in progress. They can immediately remove access or report suspicious activity to compliance and legal teams.
IGA systems offer an important function in meeting industry and regulatory compliance mandates. With regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) emphasizing access control and data protection, companies are focusing on improving transparency and their ability to restrict access to sensitive information. An effective IGA solution can automate periodic reviews and attestation with built-in reporting capabilities to support these compliance requirements.
IGA tools work to streamline the process of managing users throughout their lifecycle, which can be a complex task in today’s mobile-first world, where employees log in to applications and systems from any device, location, or app. They can help administrators avoid costly mistakes, which may result in unnecessary IT tickets or help desk calls. They can also improve productivity by allowing users to securely access data from any location or device while maintaining compliance with policies and standards.
