Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) is a branch of Identity and Access Management (IAM) that refers to the security processes that govern and manage identities within an organization. A vital piece of today’s cybersecurity tech stack, IGA secures digital identities (human or machine), and automates application and data access so security teams can streamline processes, ensure compliance and reduce organizational risk. These solutions enable a host of functions including application and employee access provisioning, access reviews, role-based access, employee/contractor onboarding, lifecycle management, and tasks surrounding the separation of duties (SOD).
Why do companies need identity governance? In short, ongoing business transformation initiatives and remote work have changed the cybersecurity landscape, and identity has become the new security perimeter. As companies undergo digital transformation, it often becomes a catalyst for organizations to modernize their governance programs. Remote workers and reliance on third-party vendors and contractors is the new normal, but they introduce security risks. Meanwhile, IT ecosystems continue to grow with skyrocketing numbers of silicon identities (bots, loT, workloads) that expand the attack surface, while privacy regulations continue to evolve.
Identity governance helps companies embrace the benefits of digital transformation and achieve regulatory compliance while ensuring that only the right people (or machines) have access to the right things at exactly the right time. When done right, IGA increases organization efficiency, improves security posture, and provides valuable insights about employee activity and needs.
IGA has become a foundational cybersecurity strategy for information security professionals because it provides a framework for companies to reduce risk and achieve compliance. It’s an area that provides operational management, integration, security, customization, and overall support for an enterprise IAM program.
IGA brings together entitlement discovery, the decision-making process, and access review and certification with identity lifecycle and user provisioning. Inappropriate and outdated access to company resources is common across many enterprise IAM programs today, creating substantial risk. Comprehensive IGA programs can help identify and manage these risks and address compliance requirements.
IGA solutions are a core component of a successful cybersecurity program with numerous business benefits. They lower operational costs, increase IT efficiency, help you manage compliance, and reduce overall risk.
Automating functions such as application provisioning, entitlement reviews and approvals, onboarding, and lifecycle management provides increased accuracy and promotes workflow efficiencies, productivity gains, and an improved security posture. Automating routine, manual, and time-consuming processes can significantly lower costs and allow personnel to focus on more significant projects or enhancements.
Based on the premise of least privilege, IGA helps organizations meet Zero Trust security objectives, can provide visibility across all identities, human and machine, and help make risk-based decisions. They can help analyze usage and identify risky activities across all identities and environments. Automation reduces the risk of mistakes caused by manual processes that could result in increased risk due to such things as overprovisioning, undetected orphaned accounts, improper certification of access requests and changes, and separation of duty violations.
The regulatory landscape continues to become more difficult to manage. IGA helps organizations quickly and effectively validate compliance or identify gaps needing remediation. Quality reporting easily provides auditors the information they need to verify compliance or show that needed remediation actions have been completed.
Industry-leading cloud architecture
Governance for all human and machine identities – including third parties
Modern web interface, mobile app, browser plug-in, and ServiceNow app
Rapid application & identity onboarding with pre-built templates and discovery of unmanaged assets & applications
AI & ML-powered identity analytics identify risk and duplicate identities, and close access gaps
Actionable insights for identity management, compliance, and security via the Control Center
How does Saviynt’s IGA solution affect your bottom line? Forrester’s Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study examines the return on investment (ROI) organizations realize with the Saviynt Enterprise Identity Cloud. In this commissioned study, Forrester estimates that implementing Saviynt can save your organization $34.4M and achieve a 240% ROI over three years.
IGA solutions manage all digital identities, both human and machine-based. For human workers, roles are defined to govern the level of access based on job requirements, whereas machine-based identities include bots, loT devices, and workloads.
Saviynt’s configure-not-code workflows embed enterprises’ risk tolerance into request, approval, and governance – reducing IT review fatigue. Saviynt’s intelligent access request automatically approves low-risk and escalates high-risk requests to improve security and reduce oversight.
Saviynt gathers access permissions from across your ecosystem, then correlates data inside an identity warehouse. With fine-grained entitlements, we provide visibility to secure disparate applications, alert organizations to Separation of Duties (SoD) violations, and suggest risk mitigation actions.
Saviynt’s RPA-style Identity Bot (iBot) connects disparate apps and automates user access – even without an integration protocol. iBot supports onboarding and management of web, CLI-based, and thick client-server applications to reduce manual work and improve governance.
Yes. Access controls within IGA solutions can help your organization quickly achieve compliance. Saviynt’s Control Exchange provides an out-of-the-box control repository and a Unified Controls Framework cross-mapped to essential regulations, industry standards, platforms, and control types (including CIS, NIST CSF, etc.). Risk-aware certifications surface compliance issues, suggest remediation, and support exception documentation.
Saviynt integrates with key governance solutions, including SIEM and UEBA platforms, to enhance risk monitoring, add context, increase activity visibility, and add real-time remediation. The platform reduces time and staffing burdens that make compliance difficult.
Yes. Moving towards zero trust requires adopting identity as your security perimeter, which is only possible with the right IGA solution in place. Saviynt offers a complete and flexible identity platform to enforce least privilege and enable access anywhere, at just the right time.
Advice on preparing for and executing modernization campaigns. Features examples from leaders on the other side of successful transitions. Read Guide ›
Check out a solution guide detailing four essential steps to ease IGA for digital business models. Explore Blog ›
At CONVERGE 20, David Kendrick of Cerner shares insights & advice from Cerner’s IGA implementation for organizations facing the modernization journey. Read the Blog ›
Saviynt named a Gartner® Peer Insights™ Customers’ Choice: IGA Learn More >
