Learn More About User Provisioning and Governance Tools
Key benefits of user provisioning and governance software solutions
- Automate user account lifecycle from provisioning during onboarding through de-provisioning after leaving the company
- Grant access to applications and systems based on user type through role or group management functions
- Reduce the time helpdesk team members need to spend manually creating users
- Improve end-user experience by offering self-service tools and integrations with single sign-on solutions and password management tools
Why use user provisioning and governance systems?
Using automated tools to manage user lifecycles, companies can eliminate manual user provisioning and de-provisioning tasks, which can ultimately reduce the burden on IT help desk teams and free up staff time for more high-level work. Deploying user provisioning and governance solutions reduces human error when creating accounts while reducing the threat of “permission creep" when accounts are not properly changed after promotions, demotions, or terminations. Using this software enables companies to manage large numbers of users at once by applying role or group policies across users in a standard fashion.
Setting up new hires — Companies use user provisioning and governance tools to ensure new hires receive access to the accounts they need as quickly as possible during onboarding. If IT staff manually created user accounts, the process could take days, weeks, or even months and be prone to human error.
Removing access for terminated employees—It is important to remove access for terminated employees as quickly as possible to prevent security risks, either from the terminated employees themselves or from hackers accessing abandoned user accounts. Using user provisioning and governance tools, companies can automatically de-provision user accounts when an employee is removed from an HR system or other identity store.
Enforcing role or group-based policies — When managing hundreds (if not thousands) of user accounts, taking actions, such as providing access to new applications based on the users’ role or group types, can save a lot of time and get these users up and running quickly. For example, suppose all sales representatives should have access to a particular sales-related application. In that case, those user accounts can automatically be provisioned with access if they belong to the sales group. On the other hand, employees in the legal department may not need access to that sales application, so they would not be provisioned with an account for that specific sales software.
Security — Insider threats can occur when user accounts are given too much access for their job type, and employees use the information they shouldn’t have access to. For example, an intern-employee likely shouldn’t be given the same access to the company’s accounts, like an accounting system, as the chief operating officer has. Using role- and group-based policies, IT administrators can easily remove permissions no longer needed by a type or group of employees and prevent permission creep.
Reducing costs—Labor is typically one of the highest expenses companies have. Using user provisioning and governance tools frees up time for IT help desk team members to do other higher-value work. Many user provisioning and governance tools solutions allow end-user self-service to make changes like name changes directly.
Features of user provisioning and governance tools
At their core, user provisioning/governance software must, at minimum, provide tools to automatically provision and de-provision user accounts based on user identities and grant permissions based on governance rules for users to access specific enterprise applications. Many user provisioning/governance software offers additional features to further automate user account lifecycles and provide a better end-user experience. These features may include:
Automatic user provisioning and de-provisioning — User provisioning/governance software pulls data from identity stores like HR systems to provision new accounts. Specific access to accounts can be automated based on roles or group membership. When an employee leaves or is terminated or when a contractor’s contract date expires, the software can automatically terminate accounts to prevent abandoned accounts from living on in systems.
Lifecycle management — The software takes user account actions throughout employee lifecycle changes from onboarding and promotions to termination.
Integrations — A main tenet of user provisioning/governance software is integrating with other software applications such as HR systems, user directories, ERP applications, email systems, databases, CRM systems, communication systems, employee productivity software, and file storage systems.
Identity synchronization — User provisioning/governance software can synchronize identity information changes across multiple applications. For example, if a user changes their personal information, such as a phone number or title, in one system, those changes are pushed to their other applications in corporate systems.
Access governance, role/group management, and policy enforcement — Governing who has access to what applications or systems is determined by a user’s role and group membership. Using role-based or group membership factors to determine what access a user should be granted ensures that access to a company application is granted uniformly and adheres to company policies.
Delegated access authorization—When business managers need to give their subordinates access to company accounts or change their permissions, they can approve access using delegation workflows.
Access verification workflow — User provisioning/governance software can regularly query managers to confirm their subordinates' access and whether changes need to be made.
Reports and audits—User provisioning/governance software can conduct audits and provide reports on account usage, including account creation and deactivation. This may be a necessary feature for companies in highly regulated industries that need to periodically audit users.
User self-service and improved user experience — Providing users with self-service functionality, such as allowing employees to change their names and titles directly in the system or being able to request access to specific applications for manager approval, can further remove manual processes off IT helpdesk staff and improve employee productivity.
Password management and single sign-on—Many user provisioning and governance tools offer additional end-user benefits, such as password management and single sign-on functionality.
Other Features of User Provisioning and Governance Tools: Bi-directional identity synchronization, Identifies and alerts for threats, Mobile app
Emerging trends in user provisioning and governance
Historically speaking, Microsoft’s product, Active Directory (AD), has been one of the most widely used directory services since its introduction in 1999. Because of AD’s large market share, it is worth mentioning that many other user provisioning and governance tools vendors generally offer both identity and user governance tools that integrate with AD or, conversely, offer entirely separate solutions that utilize their own directory service.
Active Directory manages IT resources, stores information about users, groups, applications, and networks, and provides access to computers, applications, and servers. AD was initially designed for on-premises use cases. Still, given the shift to cloud computing and storage in the digital transformation, Microsoft introduced Azure AD, which extends an on-premises instance of AD to the cloud and synchronizes identities with cloud-based applications. Other user provisioning and governance tools offer cloud solutions tying into on-site AD instances. Many providers provide cloud-native solutions and robust identity and access management (IAM) tools.
Software and services related to user provisioning and governance solutions
User provisioning and governance tools are part of a complete identity management solution. Many user provisioning and governance tools providers natively have or integrate with other providers to offer:
Single sign-on (SSO) software — Single sign-on (SSO) software allows users to access multiple corporate applications with one set of credentials. This gives users more access to their applications without logging in multiple times. Single sign-on (SSO) is achieved through federation by linking IT systems, applications, and identities to create a seamless user experience.
Password manager software—Password manager software helps end users manage their passwords by allowing them to create one master password to access the passwords associated with their accounts. This is different from single sign-on, which federates the identity to other applications, while password manager software merely provides a secure storage vault to house user passwords.
Identity and access management (IAM) software — User provisioning and governance tools are a part of identity and access management (IAM) functionality, which allows IT administrators to quickly provision, de-provision, and change user identities. IAM software also authenticates users to ensure they are who they say they are before providing access to corporate assets. IAM software is a modern solution, especially for companies utilizing numerous cloud-based applications.
Customer identity and access management (CIAM) software — Customer identity and access management (CIAM) software manages a company’s customer identities and accounts. CIAM is different from identity and access management (IAM) software. IAM is used for internal corporate use—such as managing the identities of internal employees or contractors—while CIAM is for customer-focused identity management.
Privileged access management (PAM) software—Privileged access management (PAM) software is a tool used to protect a company’s privileged account credentials. It is generally used by IT administrators and other super users with high-level access to applications, not everyday users.
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) software — Before granting a user access to company assets, it is essential to authenticate that they are indeed who they say they are. This can be achieved using multi-factor authentication (MFA) software solutions such as SMS codes, mobile push, biometric verification, or email one-time-pass (OTP) pushes. For example, if an employee loses their laptop, the laptop and the accounts the employee has access to are generally rendered useless to someone else unless that person could spoof the employee’s other authentication factors.
