User access provisioning is often manually managed using spreadsheet-based documentation and siloed tools across multiple business units. Manually provisioning multiple accounts for a single user requires time-consuming and inefficient coordination between siloed teams, systems, and tools.
Integrated Identity and Access Management (IAM) solutions such as Tello streamline this process. IAM solutions provide a centralized automated interface for provisioning multiple user accounts, managing access rights, and audit logging across multiple systems and applications.
This article reviews these six best practices that organizations can use to implement their own automated and integrated user provisioning solutions.
Continue reading for more detail on enabling each of these best practices.
You cannot build a better user provisioning system with manual user provisioning. Manual user provisioning always results in higher IT staffing and support costs, compliance issues, and security risks.
Deploying a centralized user provisioning solution such as Tello allows administrators to securely provision user identities for multiple system, application, and data access from a single interface (no time-consuming, chaotic, cross-functional provisioning activities). Audit logging can also be centralized, providing a single view of user provisioning for compliance reporting.
Using an IAM user account provisioning solution enables the following benefits that cannot be realized through manual user provisioning:
Before implementing IAM user provisioning, your organization will need a complete inventory of all software assets that require provisioning. This includes approved SaaS and organizational applications as well as IT apps managed by different divisions.
Use your software asset inventory to populate your IAM user provisioning solution with its target systems and applications. Regularly review and update the inventory to ensure all current applications are being managed by your IAM solution.
Look for and enable the key Identity and Access Management (IAM) solution features and capabilities listed in table 1. These capabilities will increase efficiency, reduce costs, enforce security and access controls, and provide access governance and compliance capabilities.
Use IAM solutions containing the key features and capabilities shown in Table 1.
|
Table 1: Key features and capabilities for IAM user provisioning |
|
|
User Provisioning Benefit |
Key features and capabilities |
|
Rapid user provisioning and instant deprovisioning
Reduced user support costs
Improved workforce productivity
|
|
|
Integration and Connectivity |
|
|
Enforcing security and access controls |
|
|
Access governance and compliance |
|
Within your solution, configure connectors and integrations for provisioning SaaS and enterprise application users. Solutions such as Tello contain connectors that link with other applications, directories, and cloud services for automated user provisioning. Pre-packaged connectors are frequently provided for major applications including Microsoft Entra ID, Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and others.
Custom integrations can also be configured to connect IAM solutions to other applications using standard protocols, including:
Consider changing your internal procedures so that all application administrators are required to process user account changes within your user IAM provisioning solution, instead of using the decentralized provisioning tools provided with each application. Continued usage of decentralized provisioning tools should be avoided, as they will enable security, compliance, integration, and support vulnerabilities and risks.
Automation simplifies user administration, reduces mistakes, increases security, and reduces support costs for application access. Look for and employ these common IAM automation features:
Related reading: Using Role-Based Access Control with Predefined Roles
Contact Seasoft Security to learn how tools like Tello can help you implement effective automated Identity and Access Management user provisioning. IAM experts can provide tailored assessments and recommendations for automating your user provisioning process.