Identity and Access Management (IAM) is getting more and more important. Reasons for this are the increasing use of mobile devices, the decentralization of systems and global access to cloud infrastructures. Where lies the danger in this topic? You really have to keep track of your user rights! When does a user need which rights for systems and applications and how does he use these rights on which device?
How to reduce your manual effort with IAM systems
As a company grows, this leads to a large number of identities and authorizations that have to be managed by employees. A lot of manual effort. The use of the right IAM systems supports you in this and relieves you of the work. The systems automate and simplify the collection, control and management of electronic identities of users and the associated access rights. The IAM systems ensure that the respective access rights comply with both the guidelines and the role of the user in the company. This ensures that all individuals and services are correctly authenticated, authorized, audited, and compliance ensured.
How do IAM systems work?
Users are quickly and securely granted the access and authorizations to applications and systems (provisioning) they need for their tasks. If the accesses and authorizations are no longer required, they are withdrawn in good time (deprovisioning). This is done using a role- and rule-based approach. Users in companies can often decide for themselves via self-service portals which accesses or access authorizations they require. In most cases, those responsible are integrated with the aid of end-to-end automated application and approval procedures.
What is Identity Management?
Identity Management (IdM) is the automated management of accounts and permissions. For daily work, employees need a number of accounts and authorizations within a multitude of applications. But not only the creation, but rather the constant administration is a large expenditure.
For example, access authorizations must be adapted when changing departments or holiday replacements. A common example is also the trainee, who passes through all departments of the company during his apprenticeship. In the “worst case” he therefore has the most authorizations in the company. This is an enormous security risk for any company. A correct administration of accounts and authorizations is therefore unavoidable – but without an IdM it is associated with an enormous amount of work and costs.
Growth of roles and authorizations
You might know the problem: historically determined role growth holds risks, which you can only eliminate with difficulty without expenditure of time and negative influence of the daily business. A real control of who can own and use which rights becomes more and more confusing over the years. For security reasons, employees and developers often organize higher SAP user rights than they actually need.
As a company, you need to demonstrate that you are in compliance and security with the required laws and guidelines and have potential risks under control. Regulations such as the IT Security Act, GDPR or the MaRisk amendment for banks and insurance companies are making data protection and security increasingly demanding. The area of GRC (Governance, Risk & Compliance) is not really new – in the Legal, HR, Finance and Internal Auditing departments, issues relating to compliance, risk management and corporate management have long been an issue.
Take control of your identity and access management! Find out more here.
