Identity Governance & Administration

Identity Governance and Administration, or IGA, is the systems and processes that help identify every network user, application, and data flow. Also known as identity security, it goes beyond the capabilities of standard identity and access management (IAM) platforms.

As the title suggests, IGA is separated into two components covering different areas.

The first is identity governance, which is the management side of IGA. Identity governance deals with role management policies, including the delineation of duties and analytics and reporting functions.

The other component is identity administration, which is the “implementation” aspect of IGA. It mainly covers account administration, entitlement management, and user provisioning and deprovisioning.

IGA, as a whole, combines these two components into one comprehensive solution. It allows an organization to automate access to assets in a network while mitigating the security risks that come with it. More importantly, IGA is a critical tool to ensure regulatory compliance.

The solution is also responsible for user identity lifecycle management and includes tools to help it perform efficiently. Core components are IGA security features like single sign-on (SSO) and password managers. IGA also manages user permissions to access both apps and data and includes automation for provisioning and deprovisioning user access.

IGA is incredibly flexible, and it isn’t limited to an on-premise solution. It can also be used to manage cloud architectures, hybrid networks, and cloud-based applications.

The biggest benefit of IGA is that it will greatly strengthen the security of your network. For example, one common cause of security breaches is stolen user credentials. With IGA, hackers cannot access every part of the system thanks to access management policies. What’s more, administrators can easily detect user access violations and rectify them immediately.

While IGA strengthens your security, it also simultaneously eases access to key assets. When users need to work with an app or data, there’s no need for IT teams to grant it manually. Since everything is automated, users can do it themselves. This speeds up your organization’s efficiency while freeing staffing for more critical tasks.

Ultimately, this helps reduce your costs by eliminating time-consuming tasks like access management, retrieving passwords, provisioning, and access certification. IGA also provides analytics and metrics to help improve user control policies, further speeding up workflows. Plus, you avoid expensive data breaches and regulatory fines with tighter security.

Identity governance solutions might seem like they’re only for big business, but this is a critical oversight. All companies, regardless of size, are at threat from breaches due to stolen credentials. For this reason, IGA will always be essential. In fact, smaller firms need more protection since they often don’t have the resources to withstand data breaches.

There’s also the misconception that only international companies subject to strict regulations should use identity governance and administration solutions. That’s also not true.

Remember that regulations are there to enforce something that all companies should already take seriously – security. By being proactive with your identity management even without regulatory oversight, you’re showing users that you care about their data security.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is the set of standards created by the federal government to protect sensitive medical information stored digitally, also called ePHI (protected health information). It ensures that patient record confidentiality and data integrity. Non-compliance with HIPAA can open you up to millions of dollars in fees.

Identity governance and administration tools are very effective at ensuring HIPAA compliance. Solutions can use artificial intelligence and analytics to monitor access to patient records and detect any unusual patterns. Access histories can also be reviewed and dealt with accordingly.

You can also enforce strict policies for apps that work with ePHI data to improve security. It’s also easy for healthcare institutions to locate both structured and unstructured ePHI, bringing greater visibility to organizations.

First, it’s useful to distinguish between identity governance and administration (IGA) and identity and access management (IAM) solutions.

IAM is the tool that manages users, identities, and what assets they can access in a network. On the other hand, IGA is much more comprehensive, as it also covers policy management, analytics, and governance.

So, how do they work together? In many ways, IAM is a vital component of IGA. It’s responsible for not only defining IAM rules but also enforcing them. In addition, IGA gives IAM tools a bigger picture purpose by connecting them with business and regulatory goals. It also helps solve many IAM challenges, like Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) initiatives and remote provisioning.

In other words, both IGA and IAM are crucial components for preventing data breaches and user credential mismanagement.