Common Identity Governance Challenges
The challenges below can affect how effectively an organisation manages user access and can create security and compliance risks when they are not addressed.
1. Stale and Excessive User Permissions
One of the challenges in identity governance is keeping user access aligned with current responsibilities. Employees may accumulate permissions over time as their roles, teams or responsibilities change. Without regular reviews, access that was appropriate when granted may no longer be necessary.
This can create privilege creep, where a user gradually holds more access than their current role requires. Access certification and regular access reviews are commonly used to identify access that is no longer appropriate and determine whether it should be retained or removed.
An effective identity governance solution should therefore make it easier to review access and manage roles as organisational requirements change.
IamLogic IGA supports this through access certification, allowing organisations to periodically review and validate user access. It also provides role management and role mining to help keep access aligned with users' roles and responsibilities.
2. Access That Remains After Employees Leave or Change Roles
Employee changes are another important source of access risk. When someone joins an organisation, they need access appropriate to their role. When they move to another role, their existing access may need to change. When they leave, their access needs to be removed.
If these changes are not handled properly, employees may retain permissions from previous roles, while former employees may continue to have access to systems they no longer need. These are common concerns within the joiner-mover-leaver (JML) lifecycle.
An IGA solution like IamLogic IGA can help manage these changes as part of a defined identity lifecycle rather than relying entirely on individual access changes.
3. Manual Access Provisioning and Requests
Access management can become difficult to manage when requests, approvals and provisioning depend heavily on manual processes. As the number of employees and applications increases, these processes can take more time and introduce opportunities for errors or inconsistent decisions.
Access requests may need to go through different approval steps depending on the application, role or type of access being requested. A structured workflow can help organisations establish how access is requested, reviewed and approved. IGA platforms commonly combine access requests and provisioning with defined policies and approval workflows.
4. Conflicting Access Rights
Not every access risk comes from a single permission being inappropriate. Sometimes the risk comes from a combination of permissions held by the same user.
For example, allowing one person to both initiate and approve a payment can create a conflict of responsibilities. This is where Segregation of Duties (SoD) controls become important. IGA solutions can identify conflicting combinations of access and help organisations prevent or manage them.
For organisations with financial, operational or other sensitive processes, SoD can therefore be an important part of an identity governance solution.
5. Fragmented Identity and Access Across Systems
Enterprise environments rarely rely on a single application or system. Organisations may have directories, enterprise applications, databases and home-grown systems, each with its own approach to managing identities and access.
When identity and access information is spread across these systems, it can become harder to maintain consistent governance and understand the overall access picture. Modern IGA guidance therefore places importance on understanding existing integrations, applications, roles, entitlements and access-review processes as part of the governance environment.
An IGA solution should be able to work with the systems that form part of the organisation's existing environment. This is particularly important where some applications require custom integration approaches.
What to Look for in an Identity Governance Solution
The challenges above highlight why organisations need to evaluate an identity governance solution based on more than one capability. At a minimum, consider whether the solution can:
- Manage identities through the joiner-mover-leaver lifecycle
- Support provisioning and deprovisioning
- Facilitate access requests and approvals
- Provide access certification and role management
- Enforce Segregation of Duties controls
- Integrate with the applications and systems already used by the organisation
The right IGA solution should help organisations maintain appropriate access as people, roles and systems change, while providing greater visibility and control over how access is governed.
Final Considerations
Identity governance is not a one-time exercise. Access needs to be managed throughout the identity lifecycle and reviewed as organisational roles, responsibilities and systems change.
IamLogic IGA brings together capabilities including identity lifecycle management, provisioning and deprovisioning, access requests, access certification, role management, role mining and Segregation of Duties controls. These capabilities address several of the core challenges organisations face when managing identity and access across an enterprise.
A structured approach to identity governance and administration can help organisations keep access aligned with business requirements while reducing the risks created by outdated, excessive or conflicting permissions.