Best Practices for Access Governance

Throughout my career as an #IAM professional, I've observed organizations consistently making the simple complex. For those just starting their formal IAM program, this post shares fundamental lessons learned from implementing IAM across different enterprises. Working with enterprises, I've seen a common pattern: organizations investing in advanced IAM solutions before establishing basic controls. Even with substantial technology investments, fundamental processes like offboarding often remain manual and error-prone. Here's what experience has taught me: sophisticated tools can't fix broken foundations. Successful IAM programs start with mastering the basics: #JML (Joiner-Mover-Leaver) automation is fundamental. Proper automation of these processes reduces security risks and ensures consistent access management throughout the employee lifecycle. For organizations just starting out, this provides immediate risk reduction and operational efficiency. Centralized access provisioning creates a foundation for governance. By consolidating access management, organizations gain visibility and control over user permissions across systems. This streamlines operations and simplifies compliance efforts. Regarding role management: organizations that begin with basic RBAC and incrementally mature their model tend to succeed. Starting with complex role structures often leads to implementation delays and adoption challenges. For organizations establishing their IAM practice, I recommend focusing on fundamentals for the first few years: - Automated JML processes - Centralized access provisioning - Basic role management - Comprehensive audit trails These core capabilities enable organizations to: - Reduce manual access management overhead - Improve security through consistent controls - Establish audit readiness - Create a foundation for advanced capabilities When reviewing IAM strategies, I often see roadmaps emphasizing advanced features while basic processes remain manual. For organizations beginning their IAM journey, establishing these fundamental controls should take precedence. For those starting out: invest time in building robust foundational processes before pursuing advanced capabilities. This approach typically yields better long-term results. Would appreciate hearing from other IAM professionals: what fundamental controls have proven most valuable in early-stage IAM programs?

How Access Governance manages user access and permissions within IT systems ⬇️ ➡ Policy-Based Identity Lifecycle Management handles user identities and their associated access and permissions to your organization's IT systems based on predefined policies and rules. It involves the entire lifecycle of your user's identity, from onboarding to changes in roles or responsibilities and, finally, offboarding. ➡ Policy-Based Access Control is a key component of access governance, allowing your organization to assign permissions based on your organization's access policies. This prevents entitlement creep by ensuring users access only the resources necessary for their job. ➡ Organizations with complex enterprise systems require Identity Life Cycle Management solutions to control access for onboarding employees, contractors, and third parties. Any change to work assignments or departures from the organization requires immediate updates to security privileges in compliance with access policies to ensure your users only have access to what they need while removing access they don't need. ➡ Periodic access reviews are conducted based on policy-defined schedules. These reviews involve managers and data owners validating that users still require their assigned access. Any deviations or discrepancies can trigger actions based on your established policies. This process helps identify and rectify any instances of entitlement creep or ghost accounts. ➡ Automated provisioning and de-provisioning of user accounts simplify user access management, reducing the risk of ghost accounts lingering after employees depart. ➡ Periodic access certification campaigns involve managers and data owners verifying that users have appropriate access. This process helps prevent unauthorized access and ensures accountability. ➡ Access governance tools often include audit trails and monitoring capabilities that allow your organization to track and investigate suspicious activity, such as unwanted guests trying to access systems. #riskandcompliance #accesscontrols #accessgovernance #cybersecurity #acesscontrols

𝗛𝗮𝗽𝗽𝘆 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗬𝗲𝗮𝗿 to all Cyber Warriors, Developers, Partners, and Customers fighting adversaries 24x7x365! As we step into 2025, I’m excited about opportunities to innovate, learn from each other and strengthen our defenses. On 𝗗𝗮𝘆 𝟵, let’s focus on Identity and Access Management (IAM), the cornerstone of Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA). ZTA enforces “𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁, 𝗮𝗹𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗳𝘆,” ensuring access requests are continuously validated. A recent survey revealed that 𝟴𝟬% 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝘆𝗯𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗮𝗰𝗸𝘀 𝗹𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘁𝘆-𝗯𝗮𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗱𝘀, highlighting the importance of robust IAM practices. Weak IAM policies enable ransomware, cloud security breaches, lateral movements, and insider threats due to excessive privileges. As Sun Microsystems (my former employer) declared, “The Network is the Computer. In today’s cloud-first world, where traditional perimeters fade, 𝗜𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗿. Best Practices for Identity as the New Perimeter 1. Enforce Least Privilege Access • Grant users the minimum access needed for their roles leveraging role-based (RBAC) or attribute-based access control (ABAC) • Leverage GenAI to reduce business friction to help RBAC scale with fine-grained access needs. 2. Leverage Single Sign-On (SSO) • Simplify access through centralized SSO, using standards like SAML and OIDC with MFA. • Integrate acquired companies seamlessly using federated identity. • Combine SSO with adaptive authentication to validate device trust and geolocation. 3. Implement Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) • Require MFA for all users, especially privileged accounts. • Adopt phishing-resistant options like FIDO2 security keys or biometric authentication. • Integrate MFA with conditional access policies for enhanced control. 4. Secure Privileged Access and Automate Management • Use Just-in-Time (JIT) provisioning for temporary elevated privileges. • Automate identity lifecycle tasks like provisioning, deprovisioning, and access certifications. 5. Reduce Friction Without Sacrificing Security • Implement adaptive authentication to balance security and user experience. • Simplify onboarding with SSO and pre-configured roles for employees and external partners. • Streamline approval workflows to enhance user experience and scalability. 6. Seamless Integration for Acquired Companies • Use federated identity to securely link systems across boundaries. • Establish templates and repeatable workflows to align with enterprise-wide policies. Building a strong IAM foundation ensures not only better security but also business agility. By focusing on strong IAM practices, organizations can be resilient in today’s interconnected world. 𝗦𝗲𝗰𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘁𝘆, 𝘀𝗲𝗰𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀. #VISA, #Cybersecurity, #12DaysofCybersecrityChristmas #IAM #PaymentSecurity #HappyNewYear!

“The good feeling you get after cleaning up over-privileged accounts lasts 10 minutes.” I talked with 600 security and IT practitioners over the past 2 years. Here’s what I learned: 1) Security, DevOps and IT teams are tasked with managing an uncontrollable amount of identities, apps, roles and entitlements. 2) Employees will tell you when they are under-privileged, but not when they are over. 3) To clean up over-privileged accounts, companies use periodical access reviews. Often used for satisfying compliance standards rather than security, retrospective reviews can result in giving users unauthorized access for months on end. 4) With 80% of last year’s cyber attacks being credential-related, no one can afford that risk exposure. 5) Reactive tools like access reviews and threat detection are important but in high-volume, noisy environments, they have a limited ability to keep privileges from sprawling. 6) To enable real-time least privilege, we must bridge the gap between security who create the policy, IT / DevOps who enforce it, and employees who are the subject of the policy. 7) For teams looking to tackle this, the focus should be on enabling employees to self-serve access, and to use risk-based approval flows that follow pre-defined security policies. Strive to automate the de/provisioning of access to enable short-lived and fine-grained permissions, needed for achieving least privilege access. And then, when you streamline the day-to-day operation of access request - evaluation - provisioning - revocation, good governance follows. Thoughts? Write them in the comments.