Business Benefits of Identity Governance
WHAT IS IDENTITY GOVERNANCE?
Simply put, Identity Governance is the visibility, review, and management of user access rights to systems and applications across the enterprise. While the commonly used term “Identity Management” is part of Identity Governance, the Governance of your digital identities is larger than just automated user provisioning.
Identity governance and administration software (IGA software) gives organizations the visibility and control needed to manage user identities throughout the entire identity governance lifecycle management process. By combining governance, compliance, and automation into one solution, organizations can reduce risk while improving operational efficiency.
Identity Governance Maturity Model
Just like all businesses are unique, each enterprise should strive for the appropriate level of maturity in its Identity Governance program. We propose a simplified maturity model describing the evolution of the Identity Governance program.
Whether your organization is just beginning its identity governance journey or looking to modernize an existing program, the right identity governance and administration tools can help you advance through each stage more efficiently.
Level 1 – Visibility into User Access Rights
Nearly all companies can benefit from a central repository showing who has access to what. This access rights warehouse becomes the core of the Identity Governance program and provides the foundation for many of the business benefits listed below.
With a centralized identity repository, IT and security teams gain a complete view of user access across cloud and on-premise applications, making audits, investigations, and compliance reporting significantly easier.
Level 2 – Automated User Access Reviews
The next step in the maturity model is to automate the periodic review of user access rights. In all but the smallest of enterprises, this effort provides tremendous benefits across the organization. With the market-leading solution Access Auditor, the return on investment is typically achieved in a matter of months.
Automating user access reviews eliminates manual spreadsheets, simplifies certification campaigns, and helps organizations continuously demonstrate compliance with regulatory requirements such as SOX, HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOC 2, and ISO 27001.
Level 3 – Automated Management of User Access Rights
The final step is the complete automated management of user access rights. With Access Manager, SCC’s automated user provisioning tool, employee on-boarding and off-boarding steps can be completely automated.
It is important to highlight that this level of governance may not be achievable or even cost-effective for some enterprises. The in-scope applications need to have some type of API to enable automation. If employee turnover is high, the cost-benefit success is measurable immediately. In some organizations, the automated access reviews in Level 2 provide 80% of the value for 20% of the cost.
By combining Access Auditor with Access Manager, organizations can support identity governance lifecycle management from initial user provisioning through ongoing access reviews and final account removal.
BENEFITS OF IDENTITY GOVERNANCE
A strong identity governance program provides many crucial benefits to the business. Some of the most important items are discussed here.
Modern identity governance and administration software not only improves security but also reduces operational costs, strengthens compliance, and provides greater visibility into who has access to critical business systems.
Reduce Time and Costs
Automation provides cost and time savings across the enterprise. The periodic review of access rights involves managers and business owners from across the company. Preparing reports, emailing spreadsheets, tracking the replies, and initiating remediation is a tireless process consuming months of labor hours. SCC can automate user access reviews in a matter of days.
The management of user access rights is equally time-consuming. Automated workflows driving the on-boarding and off-boarding of users’ privileges can provide massive time savings for mid-sized and larger enterprises.
By replacing manual processes with IGA software, organizations can free IT teams to focus on strategic initiatives instead of repetitive administrative tasks.
Visibility and Process Efficiency
Many existing processes rely upon knowing who has access to what. Identity Governance will provide a single place to find all access for all users across both on-premise and cloud applications.
Identity governance becomes a resource across the organization. Even without automated provisioning, a single view of user access provides tremendous efficiencies for user on-boarding and off-boarding processes. The IT staff will instantly know each user’s access privileges making removal seamless while avoiding countless hours of searching across hundreds of systems.
This centralized visibility also helps managers quickly validate appropriate access during audits, employee transfers, mergers, and organizational changes.
Minimize Risk
- Too Much Access: Having privileges you no longer need or use can lead to drastic consequences. According to a previous Verizon report, 15% of data breaches were caused by access and data misuse. You can greatly reduce your risk by limiting unnecessary access rights.
- Access Rights Creep: As users transfer roles, they collect accounts and privileges over time. Without a regular review process, this can lead to unintended consequences- such as… users who may be terminated, orphan accounts, or transfers?
- Policy Violations: Certain combinations of access rights can lead to violations of separation of duties policies. An Identity Governance program that allows you to monitor for cross-application separation of duties provides an automated way to detect and prevent Segregation of Duties (SoD) policy violations
- Terminated Users: A centralized repository of user access allows the verification that IT has removed all access for terminated users.
Together, these capabilities strengthen your organization’s IGA security posture while reducing the likelihood of insider threats and audit findings.
IT and Regulatory Compliance
Nearly all IT and regulatory compliance frameworks require effective user access controls. Most, such as SOX, HIPAA, PCI, and more, require periodic user access reviews. Moreover, industry regulators, especially in the financial industries, often require periodic review of user access. An automated user access review tool is invaluable not only for time savings, but also to ensure completeness and accuracy.
Identity governance and administration software creates a repeatable, documented review process that provides auditors with clear evidence of compliance while reducing the burden on IT and business managers.
Improve User On-Boarding Experience
The obvious benefit of automated provisioning is a tremendous reduction in labor costs. But automated provisioning also enables instant access to technology resources on the new hire’s first day. Automation that is triggered by a new hire HR event can automatically grant necessary access before the employee begins, allowing for increased productivity for all new employees.
An automated user provisioning tool also helps ensure employees receive only the access they need based on their role, supporting least-privilege security principles from day one.
CONCLUSION
The benefits of a strong Identity Governance program are compelling. SCC’s Access Auditor Suite provides a fast and effective tool to help you achieve your governance roadmap. You can combine both on-premise and cloud applications into a single consolidated view of user access rights. Maturity Model Levels 1 and 2 with visibility and review of access rights can be achieved in a matter of days.
Whether you’re beginning your identity governance journey or looking to modernize an existing program, SCC’s identity governance and administration software helps automate user access reviews, improve compliance, and reduce security risk without lengthy implementations.
Ready to simplify identity governance? Contact SCC today to schedule a personalized demonstration and learn how Access Auditor can help automate your user access reviews while strengthening your overall identity governance program.
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