Identity Governance and Administration for Application Access Management

For organizations that need to streamline, improve, and more effectively manage their application, mobile device, and cloud access controls, Guidehouse’s identity governance and administration implementations can safeguard sensitive personal and proprietary information.

An organization’s applications host a variety of sensitive data including proprietary information, personally identifiable information, and financial transactions. A breach or access vulnerability in these systems could have serious reputational, regulatory, compliance, and insurance risks for an enterprise. Additionally, poor access management practices often result in ineffective access controls, slow manual provisioning of access, and cumbersome access reviews.

Fortunately, identity governance and administration (IGA) tools provide a robust and streamlined solution to establish user identities and facilitate user access management within applications and systems.

Guidehouse streamlines identity governance and administration

While other applications require identity access provisioning, the implementation of IGA within applications requires special care. Being able to assign functionality that limits users to the actions or information that they are authorized to access is a critical risk-management process. Once implemented, IGA functions as a key component of the access life cycle within the organization, allowing it to dynamically limit the content specific systems users can access within different applications.

Guidehouse’s experts can help organizations set up IGA processes and tools to control or limit access to applications to prevent misuse and unauthorized access to the data those apps host. Through our experience with complex IGA implementations, Guidehouse has developed streamlined processes to help facilitate integrated IGA programs in financial applications.  

Guidehouse’s IGA process

Access request initiation (joiner) — User or management initiates an access request.

Access approval — The request is routed to a supervisor or person with approval privileges.

Access provisioning/de-provisioning —Access is provisioned or de-provisioned to the specific application or system requested.

Segregation of duty violation —Governance rules are established to ensure users don’t get access rights that violate segregation controls that management, external accounts, and regulators deem inappropriate and thus create a conflict in your governance model.

Certification —Periodic certifications are required to ensure that a user should still have the access privileges assigned to them.

Leavers & movers —As users leave the organization or more importantly change within the organization, access rights need to change to reflect the change in employment status and responsibilities.

Benefits of identity governance for financial applications

Role management — IGA tools categorize roles within an application that are tied to the access of content and assign roles to individuals that are associated with the amount of access an individual is authorized to have. IGA tools can also dynamically adjust roles and access.

Limited data views — IGA tools can limit access to data tailored to a specific user. For instance, a manager may be able to access the salary of their employees but not of other employees in the organization.

Segregation of duties — IGA tools create checks and balances within an application to prevent crucial actions from completing without other oversight and approval. For example, a user cannot be allowed to initiate and approve the same transaction.

With significant risks involved in access management for information technology applications, IGA presents an opportunity for hardening of security and access controls. However, implementation is often seen as a challenge. Guidehouse’s streamlined IGA implementation processes can help organizations easily leverage IGA tools to simplify access management while protecting sensitive data.