Organizations are required to govern access to systems, and applications, comply with multiple regulations and protect sensitive data. Giving someone more access than they need to perform their job can have drastic consequences. Insider threats are real and organizations must take steps to ensure appropriate access.

Organizations must not only understand who has access to what but be able to validate that someone’s access is appropriate. This is where automating access certifications can help. By using an automated access certification solution, businesses have a clear understanding of user access.

Having an effective technology solution for access certification can provide an outstanding comprehension of which users have access to specific resources by filtering and consolidating entitlement data throughout the enterprise. This will also provide reporting on user access across all enterprise systems and applications. By using an automated solution, both accuracy and authentication of access reviews will speed and increase.

Additionally, an effective solution will allow decision makers to repeal inappropriate access. In return, the enterprise will enforce policies in the areas of segregation of duties and least privilege. Lastly, having an implemented access solution will provide audit trail reports to give evidence that access has been reviewed and essentially corrected.

An enterprise’s ability to improve reach while simultaneously managing business risk is the foundation of identity and access management. Access certification technology sparks initiatives in this area in many ways. It is responsible for consolidating and correlating identity and access data, which can be used in provisioning and role management. Access certification filters the consolidated data, which leaves a sturdy, trustworthy foundation to develop upon.

Access certification is crucial when it comes to avoiding access violations. Without access certification, the risk of security breaches increases. Regularly scheduled access reviews allow users to be assigned the necessary amount of access to do their jobs. Event-based access reviews (reviews triggered by transfers, promotions, or terminations) corroborate internal employees do not accumulate access while with the organization as well as ensure both internal and external employees’ access does not preserve after termination with the organization.

With a successful access certification solution, an organization should notice a completely automated certification process; building warehouse entitlements, scheduling and monitoring certifications, and ensuring ongoing tracking and reporting. The solution should automate the following tasks:

• Import and correlate entitlement data from the existing IT infrastructure from enterprise applications and filter from multiple sources to a single source
• Schedule and monitor manager and application-owner certifications in correspondence with business priorities to keep reviews on schedule
• Track access modifications regularly to guarantee appropriate IT infrastructure changes are made
• Generate reports that notify administrators on existing or possible violations, remediations, and exceptions to remain compliant with organization requirements

An access certification solution should be an integral piece of a company’s provisioning and role management processes. This will enable a successful closed-loop management of security policy violations and the corresponding access revocations. Having a complete life-cycle approach will make the following possible:

• Efficient and effective removal of access that violates guidelines while retrieving appropriate audit information
• Increase compliance by remaining within the defined business roles based on appropriately assigned access
• Use business roles to assign, attest, and audit access

Finding the correct vendor to implement the right access certification solution is important. A worthy vendor should:

• Have deep knowledge of of the interrelationships between core identity challenges, processes, and solutions
• Provide expertise in compliance management as well as provisioning, role management, and directory services
• Demonstrate the understanding and ability to productively address challenges in Web access management and secure Web services
• Demonstrate expertise in its service that will guide your efforts to develop an effective identity infrastructure