Effectively safeguarding your organization’s assets, resources, and data starts with securing identities and managing authorizations. However, identity management isn’t a one-time task—it’s a continuous process that must adapt as identities, roles, and risk factors evolve over time.
In this blog, we’ll unpack the concept of Identity Lifecycle Management (ILM) and explore best practices to ensure your organization’s identities—whether human or machine—are properly managed. We’ll delve into how to provide the right access at the right time while preventing unauthorized access when it’s no longer needed.
There’s often a lot of technical jargon when discussing Identity Lifecycle Management (ILM), but we’ll start with practical definitions and explore how to manage identity transitions effectively.
What is Identity Lifecycle Management?
At its core, an identity represents a digital presence within your organization, which can belong to a person or a machine. These identities range from employees and contractors to customers, devices, APIs, and workloads. An identity’s lifecycle comprises every activity involving that identity’s creation, usage, and retirement—essentially everything that requires provisioning, monitoring, and management.
To simplify, the identity lifecycle is typically categorized into three high-level stages: joining, moving, and leaving. Let’s take a closer look at what these stages entail.
Joiners: The Onboarding Stage
“Joiners” refer to any new identity—be it an employee, contractor, or machine—that requires access to your organization’s resources. A joiner could be a new hire needing permissions to perform their job, a customer registering on your website, or a third-party vendor onboarding for a specific project.
Before any access can be granted, an identity must be established. This is the foundational step that paves the way for assigning permissions and provisioning resources effectively. Proper management at this stage ensures that the right entitlements are provided, in line with the user’s role and organizational policies.
Movers: Adapting to Changing Roles
Movers are identities that undergo significant changes within your organization. This can happen when an employee switches departments, a contractor takes on a different project, or an API shifts to a new development environment. Movers need their access permissions adjusted to reflect their new roles or responsibilities.
Mismanagement at this stage often leads to unnecessary access being retained, creating security gaps. It’s crucial that old permissions are removed and new ones are granted promptly to minimize risk.
Leavers: Managing Departures
Leavers are identities that no longer require access, such as employees leaving the organization, vendors completing a project, or devices being decommissioned. Proper deprovisioning ensures that these identities no longer have access to your systems.
Neglecting this step can leave your organization vulnerable to data breaches and insider threats, as lingering permissions can be exploited long after the identity should have been retired. Ensuring all access is terminated immediately is essential for a strong security posture.
Understanding the Risks of Mishandled Permissions
When permissions are not managed correctly, either through over-provisioning or under-provisioning, your organization is at risk. Over-provisioning leads to excessive access, which can be exploited by attackers or insiders. Under-provisioning, on the other hand, hinders productivity and prompts users to find workarounds, such as sharing credentials, which further weakens security.
The Principle of Least Privilege should guide all access decisions—meaning identities should only have access to the resources they need, no more, no less. This principle is difficult to enforce without robust identity management processes, which can cause security loopholes to emerge.
The Real-World Impact of Poor Identity Management
Common issues with Identity Lifecycle Management (ILM) stem from breakdowns in communication between departments like HR, IT, and business units. For instance, HR may initiate the onboarding pocess for a new joiner, but it might not be clear to IT what specific resources this new employee requires access to. This can lead to delays in provisioning or, worse, blanket access being provided to avoid repeated approvals.
For movers, keeping track of evolving roles and permissions is challenging without a centralized system, and IT might not be notified promptly of changes. As a result, movers could retain unnecessary access for longer than needed, leading to compliance issues and potential security risks.
Leavers pose an even more significant challenge. HR and IT must act swiftly to terminate access once the employment ends, but manual processes can cause delays. In a study, 25% of employees admitted they still had access to company systems after leaving previous jobs. This creates a massive security vulnerability, making it essential to deprovision accurately and efficiently.
Optimizing Identity Lifecycle Management (ILM) for Joiners, Movers, and Leavers with IGA
Managing the lifecycle of identities through manual or siloed systems is not only time-consuming but also error-prone. Organizations can overcome these challenges by implementing Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) solutions, which provide an automated, end-to-end process for managing access and permissions through a unified platform.
Here’s how IGA can streamline Identity Lifecycle Management (ILM)for each stage:
- Joiners: IGA integrates directly with HR systems to automate the provisioning process, ensuring new joiners receive only the necessary permissions based on their roles. This reduces the need for back-and-forth approvals and gets new hires up and running faster.
- Movers: With IGA, when an identity’s role changes, permissions can be adjusted automatically according to pre-defined policies. This removes the need for manual intervention and reduces the risk of privilege creep.
- Leavers: IGA ensures that as soon as a departure is confirmed, all access is revoked immediately, eliminating the chance for unauthorized access post-employment.
IGA: A Critical Component of Identity Security
Identity security encompasses more than just authentication and authorization. It’s about establishing a holistic view of how identities interact with your organization’s assets throughout their entire lifecycle. By adopting IGA solutions, businesses can minimize risk, enforce least privilege access, and maintain compliance more effectively.
When evaluating IGA solutions, look for platforms that are easy to use, quick to implement, and demonstrate clear ROI. This will ensure that your organization can maintain a strong security posture without compromising on efficiency.
How Can Technosprout Help Your Organization?
Identity Lifecycle Management is crucial for securing your organization’s data and resources. Whether it’s onboarding a new employee, reassigning permissions for an internal transfer, or offboarding a contractor, each stage of the lifecycle presents unique challenges and security considerations.
By leveraging the right IGA solutions, you can effectively manage identities throughout their lifecycle, ensuring that users and non-human entities have the right access at the right time—no more, no less—while maintaining security and compliance across your environment.
Amidst a myriad of MSSP options in the market, why opt for Technosprout? How can we help? What sets us apart?
Achieving cyber confidence begins with a solid strategy and governance. Technosprout leverages an “Assess, Design, Implement and Manage” four-pronged approach that leads organizations methodically through business transformation throughout the lifecycle
Our managed security services provide customized, comprehensive solutions, addressing specific business needs strategically along with the best certified experts and an experience of 7+ years in the market.
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