The identity life cycle in a company context is a term used to define the complete cycle of the identification and access allowance needed by users over systems and environments to properly develop the corresponding assigned job. This concept is often used in a business context in relation with systems that handle the whole context of someone accessing data on corporate resources from the moment a person is hired to the moment they leave the company.
Managing identities and accesses can be a huge task for companies depending on its size and number of managed systems. Government over this management depends on the company but it is often found that applications and accesses are managed by different teams and diverse responsible people leading to uncontrolled environments where accesses and roles are not properly assigned or removed. This lack of organization entails a massive security risk and implies too much effort and time spent on task that should be trivial.
Identity and Access Management Solutions
In order to face the problems exposed above and improve control and response time, Identity and Access Management (IAM) solutions have been created to act as a point of control and nexus between systems and people so that identities, accesses and privileges can be managed from a single point.
Identity and Access Management is a set of business policies, processes, and supporting cross-system technologies set up to manage the creation, maintenance and use of digital identities. Its main function is to orchestrate systems and resources, keeping them updated and consolidating the changes between them while ensuring that the adequate people in an enterprise have the appropriate access to technology resources.
IAM will be the single point used to grant and revoke accesses and permissions to every person in the company also holding this person identity which aside from those accesses may include information related to the position, skills and other desired information.
IAM benefits
- It acts as a centralized repository of user and organizational data that allowing all applications to have the same data improving information quality.
- Automated access processing.
- Flexibility to organizational changes and user changes base on the recalculation of defined accesses.
- Increase in corporate security due to the control of user access and permissions.
- Access granted to the adequate assets
- Correct access level privileges
- Timely access removal on employee leave
Author: Ferran Cabré