Access certification audits are aggravating for everyone — gathering system entitlement information, explaining the process to approvers and then documenting exceptions to achieve compliance governance is an exhausting and time consuming process. If you happen to work in an industry that’s highly regulated, it’s likely that you’re perpetually in the identity and access management audit cycle. Thankfully, you can make this process much easier on your staff and more efficient for your organization by leveraging the power of identity and access governance software.
At Avatier we are observing trends and opportunities around four key factors related to identity management, access management and identity governance that are particularly relevant to industries subject to stringent compliance statutes, including:
Regulatory Pressure
Authorization requirements will become increasing complex in response to regulatory pressure. This trend will particularly affect verticals subject to strict regulatory requirements, including banking, health care, government and education. From a regulatory standpoint, identity authentication isn’t sufficient. The key lies in being able to automate access management and create activity logs to hold personnel accountable for their actions. For compliance management, organizations in these highly regulated verticals will seek out identity and access management software solutions that pre-build business rules to ensure regulatory compliance with NIST 800-53, NERC, SOX and HIPAA statutes.
Features of Automated Identity and Access Management Software
User Self-Service
As the cost of servicing a help desk call currently tops $24 on average, organizations will move in droves to facilitate self-service wherever and however possible. Users will be able to administer their own passwords and groups and requests for access via the organization’s identity and access management automated workflow approval systems. While the cost savings associated with self-service are obvious, the value of this innovation is predicated on the idea that personnel will actually use the system instead of calling the help desk. To encourage trial, adoption and a successful implementation, solution providers will need to deliver a simple, intuitive interface familiar enough for non-technical staff members.
Access Provisioning
The fluidity of today’s work environments is shining a spotlight on the importance of effective identity and access management software protocols. It’s not just about on-boarding and termination of user accounts — it’s about controlling and limiting access to confidential data. Staff members should only have access to the data they need to do their jobs. And if their jobs change within the organization, their access permissions should shift along with their role change. Role-based user provisioning protocols will be widely adopted as a best practice. For instance, if a bank branch manager in one location has been allocated a specified set of permissions, then all other bank branch managers should be granted the same permissions. If a specific branch manager’s position changes, user permissions should automatically update to reflect the role shift. The challenge with this approach is determining an organization’s role entitlement requirements to begin with, but there are now software and services that dramatically help with the role mining process. Once the role entitlement needs are understood, an intuitive identity and access management software solution should be leveraged to enforce role-based access management.
IT Audit Facilitation
The time and aggravation invested in preparing for and executing access certfication IT audits will become a thing of the past. Next generation IT audit solutions will not only ensure compliance through solid user provisioning protocols but also simplify and automate data collection and reporting for auditing and compliance management purposes. What used to take days and countless people hours to report will take mere minutes through identity and access management software automation. For organizations operating in industries seeking sustainable IT audit processes, the cost savings, efficiency and streamlined compliance management operations will pay off in spades.
Using automation and rules engines, Compliance Auditor makes essential auditing tasks flawlessly and easily manageable for optimum and immediate control and reporting of access certification governance risk compliance across your enterprise. With automated IAG access certification reviews, watch the video to learn more about how Compliance Auditor ensures validation requests can be seamlessly generated, obtained, reviewed, and removed.
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