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 Maturity Model

Just like all businesses are unique, each enterprise should strive for the appropriate level of maturity in their Identity Governance program. We propose a simplified maturity model describing the evolution of the Identity Governance program.

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.

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.

Level 3 – Automated Management of User Access Rights

The final step is the complete automated management of user access rights. With a simple and powerful system such as the Access Manager, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 SOD policy violations
Terminated Users: A centralized repository of user access allows the verification that IT has removed all access for terminated users.

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 for not only time savings, but also to ensure completeness and accuracy.

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.

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.
Access Auditor has delivered success to customers of all sizes. Our customers detail their success on Gartner and you can read more here.