Choosing an IGA solution: can it govern what people can actually do?

An identity governance and administration (IGA) solution should help you establish who has access, what that access allows, whether it is appropriate and whether required changes actually happen.

That becomes difficult when the answers sit across HR records, application roles, service tickets and spreadsheets. Your team may approve requests and complete reviews, yet still struggle to explain someone’s combined permissions or prove that obsolete access was removed.

When evaluating IGA, these are the gaps worth testing. They determine whether the solution improves control over access and reduces the work required to maintain it.

The problem starts where individual workflows stop

Consider an employee moving from accounts payable into procurement.

Their new manager approves purchasing access. An administrator fulfils the request. The ticket closes. But the employee retains previous permissions to maintain supplier details.

At the next access review, a manager sees two role names. Neither explains the sensitive permissions underneath them. Whether the combination creates a segregation-of-duties conflict may also depend on the legal entities or business units the employee can access.

Everyone has completed their assigned task. The organization still cannot confidently explain whether the employee’s access is appropriate.

Similar gaps appear when contractors leave, temporary privileges expire or reviewers request removals. Recording the decision is one step. Establishing the resulting access is another.

Why leaving the gaps unresolved becomes expensive

Unnecessary permissions can remain available after responsibilities change. Conflicting access may escape review. Legitimate requests can also stall while approvers seek information that should already be available.

The operating cost builds around those uncertainties.

Application administrators extract account lists. Identity teams reconcile records. Managers ask what unfamiliar roles mean. Audit teams reconstruct the connection between approvals, changes and supporting evidence.

Adding applications, contractors and non-human identities increases the information and handoffs involved. Automating one part of that process can leave the surrounding work intact.

An IGA evaluation should therefore answer two questions:

Can the solution support better access decisions? And can your organization operate the resulting process consistently, at an acceptable cost?

For a broader capability checklist, review what to look for in identity governance and administration software before testing the six areas below.

What to evaluate and where SafePaaS differs

SafePaaS brings detailed application permissions, organizational context and access-policy analysis into identity governance. Its federated architecture supports working alongside existing systems, while its modular approach allows organizations to begin with a defined governance requirement.

If you already operate an IGA platform, explore how SafePaaS enhances existing identity governance and identify which access-control gaps you need to address.

Those capabilities become useful when you test them against a real business problem. Use the following six areas to structure your evaluation.

1. Visibility: look beneath the account and role name

Knowing that an employee holds a “Finance” role does not explain whether they can change supplier bank details, approve payments or post journals.

Your evaluation should establish whether reviewers can see the underlying permissions, including relevant inherited access and organizational restrictions. Include access assigned outside the normal request process.

The SafePaaS distinction: entitlement-level visibility helps reviewers understand the privileges associated with access. SafePaaS can also collect access information from applications and other provisioning sources, supporting reviews of access administered through different routes.

Ask to see: one person’s accounts and permissions in a priority application, how those accounts are matched to their identity, and how incomplete collections or unmatched accounts are identified.

Include accountable ownership for service accounts, integrations, bots or AI agents where relevant.

Where AI agents are in scope, use these identity governance considerations for AI agents to extend your evaluation questions.

2. Lifecycle management: connect organizational changes to appropriate permissions

A mover needs more than additional access. Their previous permissions need to be reassessed against their new responsibilities.

The same principle applies to joiners and leavers: access should reflect the business need, and the resulting changes should be traceable.

Review SafePaaS identity lifecycle management capabilities, then test how they apply to your own joiner, mover and leaver scenarios.

The SafePaaS distinction: lifecycle decisions can use organizational context such as department, location, legal entity and business responsibility. That context helps define which access is appropriate within connected applications.

Ask to see: a joiner, mover or leaver scenario from the initiating event through policy checks, approval, fulfilment and verification.

3. Policy and Segregation of Duties: assess the business context of access

A request may appear reasonable in isolation while creating a conflict with permissions already held.

Role names alone may not provide enough information to assess that conflict. Your rules may need to account for business units, operating units, legal entities or other restrictions.

Explore SafePaaS access-policy and segregation-of-duties controls to identify the rules, scope and exceptions your demonstration should test.

The SafePaaS distinction: its approach combines detailed permissions with organizational context to support access-policy and segregation-of-duties decisions. This gives the evaluation a practical focus: whether the analysis reflects how access works in your business.

Ask to see: a sensitive request assessed against existing permissions before approval. Where required, include a conflict spanning applications.

Test the exception process too: who accepts the risk, what justification is recorded, and when that acceptance is reviewed.

4. Reviews and roles: give decision-makers information they can use

A completed certification campaign tells you that decisions were recorded. You also need to establish whether reviewers understood the access and whether reusable roles remain appropriate.

Use the guide to fine-grained access reviews to define the permission detail reviewers should receive.

The SafePaaS distinction: entitlement-level reviews expose the permissions beneath assigned roles. Its Enterprise Roles Manager also connects roles derived from authoritative HR information to application entitlements and supports ongoing risk simulation as responsibilities and applications change

Ask to see: what a business reviewer sees for a sensitive access item, how the review population is checked, and how a role change is assessed for risk.

Choose a role that requires maintenance. Establish who owns it and how changes to its permissions are governed.

5. Actions and exceptions: follow the decision to its outcome

A reviewer selects “remove.” A task is created. The workflow closes.

What confirms that the permission is no longer available?

This question should remain central when evaluating SafePaaS. Confirm the execution and verification methods for each application in scope.

Ask to see: a successful change, a failed action and a partial outcome. Establish how discrepancies become visible, who receives them and what evidence confirms resolution.

Assess three requirements separately: collecting access information, changing access and verifying the resulting state. Document any remaining manual steps.

For review-driven changes, examine SafePaaS access certification workflows and ask how removal decisions, remediation tasks and resulting access are tracked in each application.

6. Evidence and affordability: evaluate the operating model

A solution’s subscription price is only part of its cost. Data preparation, integration support, policy maintenance, review administration and exception handling all require ownership.

The SafePaaS distinction: its modular approach allows organizations to begin with selected capabilities and applications. Its federated model supports retaining existing infrastructure where appropriate. This creates a basis for evaluating a focused first phase and the requirements for expansion.

Ask to see: the evidence connecting a request or review to its decision, action and outcome. Then request an itemized view of implementation dependencies, ongoing administration and expansion costs.

If audit evidence is a selection criterion, review how IGA should support compliance and audit and include those evidence requirements in your test.

Compare the proposed process with your current effort over the same scope and period. Count reduced work only where the evaluation demonstrates it, allowing for responsibilities that remain.

If you are establishing your first IGA program, explore identity governance without enterprise complexity to frame a phased evaluation around selected applications and capabilities.

Include independent market research in your evaluation

SafePaaS was named a Representative Vendor in the 2026 Gartner® Market Guide for Identity Governance and Administration, published on 28 August 2026.

Use that recognition alongside your own evaluation evidence. Application coverage, permission detail, policy requirements, operating responsibilities and demonstrated outcomes should inform whether SafePaaS fits your organization.

Make the first evaluation specific enough to prove something

Choose one important application and one representative scenario.

A useful starting point might be a mover retaining obsolete access, a sensitive request requiring an SoD check or an access review with removal actions.

If an IGA platform is already in place, use the extend, replace or federate decision guide to clarify which approach the evaluation needs to compare.

Before the demonstration, agree what success means:

● The relevant accounts and permissions can be collected and understood.

● Policy checks reflect the business context defined for the test.

● Reviewers receive enough information to make an informed decision.

● Required changes reach a verified outcome.

● Failures and exceptions reach accountable owners.

● Evidence connects the decision to the outcome.

● Remaining work and operating costs are clear.

Confirm an engaged application owner, usable data and an execution path. If a prerequisite is missing, assign the discovery work and keep the application in your plan.

Put SafePaaS to the test against your hardest access question

Think of one access decision your team struggles to explain today. An employee who changed roles but retained sensitive permissions. A reviewer approving access they do not fully understand. A removal request that closed without confirmation that access changed.

Make that scenario the starting point for evaluating SafePaaS.

Bring one priority application, the business rules that matter and the evidence you need. Ask SafePaaS to demonstrate how detailed permissions, organizational context and policy analysis support the decision and how the resulting action can be verified.

Your evaluation should establish:

· Whether you can see what someone can actually do.

· Whether access decisions reflect your business policies and risks.

· Whether changes reach a verified outcome, with clear ownership of exceptions.

· What your team would need to implement, operate and maintain.

Evaluate SafePaaS against your access requirements

Leave with a clearer basis for deciding whether SafePaaS fits your applications, control requirements and operating model.