An effective identity governance and administration (IGA) solution enables organizations to reduce cyber risk by providing centralized visibility for current access privileges. Combined with a strong authentication and access management infrastructure, this reduces the risk of stolen or default user credentials being used by threat actors.
IGA includes a centralized identity repository and integration with systems and applications to manage access consistently. It also incorporates controls to govern privileged access granularly.
Enhanced Visibility into User Activity
Achieving and maintaining visibility into activity can be challenging. Manual processes can be time-consuming and error-prone. Providing access to users takes more time when done manually, and certifying privileges is difficult without an effective system of record. And many organizations rely on third-party tools and solutions that may need more built-in monitoring capabilities. Resource constraints and reactive security cultures can also keep organizations from prioritizing visibility measures.
Identity governance and administration (IGA) is a framework for managing user identities, provisioning, roles, and entitlements, logging, reporting, and auditing into a holistic identity management strategy. It allows enterprises to combine identity and access management functions and technologies proactively into a single architecture.
IGA solutions enable a wide range of benefits, including a tangible return on investment for security leaders, an enabled workforce, and efficient, streamlined compliance and mitigation of risks. These solutions provide an identity foundation empowering today’s most critical cybersecurity initiatives, such as digital transformation and zero trust.
Moreover, IGA solutions automate processes that were previously manual or done using disparate systems and applications. IGA solutions leverage a central identity repository to store and manage identity information, and they integrate with multiple systems and applications for centralized orchestration of user access management and governance. Augmented with advanced analytics and artificial intelligence, these capabilities help identify patterns, anomalies, and potential risks and flag them in real time.
Enhanced Compliance
With identity governance and administration, organizations can streamline core processes and systems, including password management, user provisioning, access requests, policy management, and certification. It mitigates identity-related risk and meets compliance guidelines resulting in significant operational efficiencies.
A robust identity governance and administration solution also help to prevent unnecessary or excessive access to data, applications, and IT infrastructure by implementing secure controls that help to enforce best practices. These solutions enable enterprises to confidently undergo digital transformations, knowing their employees can access the resources they need to be productive.
An organization’s ability to identify and swiftly address possible security vulnerabilities is improved by increased visibility into identities and access credentials. For example, by implementing role-based access control, which involves assigning users to predefined, comprehensive roles that are associated with specific access rights, security personnel can quickly review and manage the current state of an individual’s access privileges, implement appropriate mitigation controls and ensure compliance with relevant regulations or standards.
In addition, identity governance and administration can significantly reduce an organization’s operating expenses by streamlining labor-intensive procedures like access reviews and certifications and providing dashboards and reporting that increase productivity and empower users to manage their permissions. It will help to limit the time IT staff must devote to these tasks, which frees them up to focus on more strategic projects for the business.
Reduced Risk
Identity governance and administration, or IGA, are processes designed to mitigate cyber risk within an organization. It includes role management, segregation of duties, access control, and authentication that help organizations track who has access to what systems and data, enabling leaders to mitigate threats before they escalate into breaches or cyber-attacks.
Whether an organization is dealing with sensitive employee data, customer information, or financial records, ensuring that the right people have access to the correct data and IT systems is critical to maintaining compliance. IGA solutions, when combined with complementary technologies, enable companies to baseline normal user behavior to identify suspicious activity that may trigger step-up authentication or other preventative measures.
In today’s hyper-connected and digitized world, protecting your company from cybersecurity risks is more important than ever. Intelligent IGA and PAM solutions can significantly reduce your risk of a breach, support streamlined access certification and compliance efforts, and confidently enable business transformation.
The bottom line is that IGA solutions are a crucial component of your IAM infrastructure. They can provide a clear return on investment by helping you avoid costly and error-prone manual processes, empower your workforce, reduce the risk of a breach, and streamline and simplify compliance across your IT environment. The next time you look for an IGA solution, remember these five reasons to guide your decision-making.
Reduced Costs
Every person, machine, and application in the IT environment has its own digital identity. It can become unmanageable for IT departments, causing errors that result in costly fines and breaches. An IGA solution can reduce this complexity by providing centralized user access control and identity management orchestration. It can also reduce the risk of breaches by enabling best practice access policies such as segregation of duties and least privilege.
With increased pressure on businesses to meet government regulations to protect sensitive data, the need for IGA is higher than ever. A well-designed IGA platform can provide policies that protect sensitive information and that companies have the required audit capabilities to demonstrate compliance. It can also help to streamline identity administration and provide a robust set of tools for self-service password management with out-of-band authentication methods such as mobile apps, SMS/text messaging, telephone DTMF, voice biometrics, and facial recognition.
As companies look to scale their IT environments, it is crucial to prioritize solutions that can grow with the organization and integrate with cloud architectures. An IGA solution can simplify security operations, reduce IT costs, and reduce the risk of costly fines and breaches. By letting staff members use any device and any location, it can promote business agility.
