What is identity and access automation?

What is IAM automation?

Let's start with a definition: IAM or Identity and Access Management automation involves the use of application solutions to manage identities and access within an organization with minimal manual intervention.

This process automates tasks such as account creation and deletion, auditing and report generation, and the application of security policies for users and access.

Now that we have laid the foundations of what IAM automation is, let's look at the benefits of doing it.

Why automate your IAM?

Automation offers faster, more consistent, and less error-prone processes, thereby reducing the risk of security breaches. It also reduces operational costs by eliminating redundant manual tasks and reduces the burden on technical support. In addition, it strengthens regulatory compliance, ensuring that all actions are documented and aligned with current standards.

Advantages for users

From the user's point of view, the automation of IT IAM ensures immediate and secure access to the resources they want to access. The disadvantage today is that a user does not have their access upon arrival and that there are complex paths throughout their presence in the company to gain new access.

The automation of identity and access management is essential for any organization seeking to optimize its security, compliance, and efficiency.

It not only supports security but also improves the user experience.

What are the key advantages of automating identity and access management?

In short, the main advantages are:

• Reduce costs and human errors
• Improved security and compliance
• Accelerate authentication and authorization processes

Improved security

IAM automation minimizes the likelihood of incidents and breaches due to human errors, such as omissions or incorrect entries, by systematically and flawlessly enforcing security policies. It also ensures that all access privileges are correctly authorized and monitored, thereby reducing the chances of unauthorized or malicious access to sensitive company resources.

Reduce operational costs

By eliminating repetitive manual interventions, identity and access management allows IT teams to focus on more strategic tasks rather than the daily management of access and identities. This results in a significant reduction in labor costs and a decrease in the number of requests addressed to IT services, which contributes to a general decrease in operational expenses.

Process acceleration

Processes such as employee onboarding and offboarding, role change management, and security audits can be accomplished in minutes rather than hours or days. This speed of execution not only improves productivity but also ensures that changes in access rights are immediately effective, reducing periods of vulnerability.

Improved compliance

Automation facilitates compliance with various internal and external regulations (such as the NIS 2 regulation) by ensuring uniform and traceable application of security policies. Automated IAM solutions can easily generate detailed reports for audits, demonstrating that the necessary controls are in place and functioning correctly, which is essential for meeting regulatory requirements.

Improved user experience

Users have fast and reliable access to the resources they need to perform their work, regardless of their location or the device used. This is particularly valuable in an increasingly mobile and distributed work environment, where users expect frictionless and secure access.

Scalability

As the organization grows, its identity and access management needs also evolve. This makes it easy to manage policies for hundreds or thousands of users without significant additional effort.

The risks of not automating identity and access management

The IT administrator's role in user management: optimizing the resources available to users so that they perform in their tasks and deliver effective returns for the company.

It's harsh, but it's the reality.

The challenges in this mission: not to hinder the company's agility and not to harm sensitive and commercial data.

The problem?

1. IT departments are under immense pressure, users are constantly changing and testing new tools, they require rapid responsiveness and tend to experiment without consulting the IT department.
2. The flexibility of working with BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), which complicates identity and access management.
3. Provisioning and deprovisioning across different applications are complex and error-prone. They are time-consuming, and administrators have to switch between applications.
4. In manual user account management, the administrator will struggle to keep pace and ensure security. Costs will then increase, with growing employee dissatisfaction (threatening resignation and demotivation), increasing license costs (uncontrolled), and increasing erroneous accounts (cyber risks).

Criteria for selecting automation tools

Analyze your specific IAM needs

Start by assessing your organization's unique needs for managing user entitlements. Take stock of your onboarding and offboarding processes.

Do you have high employee turnover? Do you have significant recruitment needs? Do you have a large number of applications to manage? Do you have audit or compliance constraints?

All these questions are crucial because they will guide you towards different solutions.
The first important thing: no company, small or large, is immune to a cyberattack. The question of risk is therefore not an exclusion criterion.

On the other hand, if you are a company with fewer than 100 people, you do not have a large number of entries/exits and you do not have a large or complicated tool stack to manage, then a well-configured Excel file will be sufficient.

For example, our smallest clients have around a hundred employees, but they either have a high turnover or a large number of applications to manage.

For SMEs and mid-sized companies, IAM solutions are not abundant on the market. Youzer (a 100% French player) is precisely positioned in this sector because it is not served by the big American names in the market.

The constraint for SMEs and mid-sized companies is as follows: a solution that is simple to grasp, with daily management that does not require complex and technical interventions.

If you want to delve into the subject of choosing an IAM solution, I refer you to this article.

Ensure compatibility and integration.

It is essential that IAM automation tools integrate seamlessly with your existing infrastructure and applications. Look for a solution that offers integrations with enterprise directories like Active Directory and can easily synchronize user and group information. Youzer has a catalog of important connectors and integrates with AD and many HRIS.

This is a crucial point in choosing your solution because you will need to create communication between your different applications in order to automate your accounts. If there are missing connectors for apps, your automation will seize up very quickly and your workflows will be anecdotal, which is not the objective since if you are here, you are looking to automate your IT onboardings and offboardings. So NEXT if the solution does not support your main software and applications.

Evaluate the cost and return on investment (ROI)

Cost is an important factor, but it must be balanced with the benefits in terms of security and operational efficiency. Compare the costs of different solutions and evaluate the potential ROI. The savings achieved through the reduction of manual tasks and improved security can justify a higher initial investment.

Test before you commit

Before making a final decision, organize a demonstration and pilot tests of the pre-selected tools. This will allow you to assess their compatibility with your environment, their user-friendliness and their actual effectiveness.

Planning and deployment of automation workflows

Once your Identity and Access Management tool has been selected, the next step is to design and implement user lifecycle automation workflows.

These workflows define: who is involved, what actions must be taken, what applications are involved. From a broader perspective, it involves defining the tasks that will be executed to implement the processes in accordance with your company's policy.

Here's a way to set up your workflows. This covers the needs very high up in the chain.

1. Define objectives and policies
   Identify the expected benefits of automation, such as reducing the time spent on account management, improving security, user experience and compliance.
   
   
2. Map the processes
   Map your manual operations that cause delays, errors, or risks. Identify the triggers (such as the arrival or departure of an employee), the actions (account creation, modification, suspension), and the conditions (validation by a manager) of each step. This mapping is essential to structure your account lifecycle management workflows.
   
   
3. Designing the account provisioning workflow
   Let's move on to the practical part: design your workflows, define the triggers, actions, and deadlines. For example, configure RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) rules to comply with the rule of least privilege. Automate user provisioning and deprovisioning.
   
   
4. Test and refine workflows
   Before widely deploying your workflows, conduct pilot tests to evaluate their effectiveness and compatibility with your systems. Gather user feedback and adjust workflows accordingly. Adjustments based on this feedback allow you to refine processes before large-scale implementation.
   
   
5. Deploy, monitor, and train
   Deploy workflows in stages. Train IT staff on new processes and tools to ensure successful and effective adoption. Communicate continuously to ensure that manual processes are permanently eliminated.
   Monitor workflow progress and logs to see if they are blocked at any stage. Anomalies can occur that halt the proper workflow execution.

Workflows are not fixed and evolve over time with the revision of internal policies. You should always keep an eye on their relevance and recency.

How does automating user lifecycle management improve company security?

IAM strengthens security, facilitates audits, allows for regular account reviews, and ensures alignment between application access and user status within the company.

A marked improvement will then be seen in audits, as they are greatly facilitated by activity logs and log analysis. All account provisionings are recorded, everything is tracked, which makes the systems compliant.

An IAM solution can generate regular and detailed reports on access usage, permission changes, and detected anomalies. This enables the provision of necessary information to auditors quickly, without intensive manual effort.

Account review is clearly one of the legal and security aspects relieved by Youzer, which is very popular with our customers. The centralization of information and accounts, of users, makes it possible to automatically send each manager a request to verify the access of each member of his team without the IT team spending time on collecting information and sending emails.

Managers will verify that users' access rights are still appropriate for their current roles within the company.

Alerts and notifications are highly relevant when detecting inactive accounts or non-compliant permissions. Automatic alerts can be sent to administrators to take immediate corrective action.

With an IAM system, we will automate the provisioning and deprovisioning of accounts, which is the basis of IAM, but it has a huge impact on security. When an employee changes jobs or leaves the company, we will be able to instantly adjust their access according to their new status or revoke their permissions, thereby reducing the risks of breaches related to unrevoked access.

RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) rules are managed through application packages in Youzer. The IT department defines packages based on a collaborator's status and position, and any alignment discrepancies will be highlighted. This also implies that predefined rules in workflows will automatically and accurately dispatch each user to the correct application package with the appropriate access and rights.

In order to have an overview of the overall security of your company, Youzer has implemented an Identity Cyber Score which is calculated based on account anomalies and errors.

This set allows you to greatly improve security within your company.

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In conclusion

By integrating IAM automation, companies can not only improve operational efficiency but also enhance their overall security and compliance.

This proactive and systematic approach minimizes the likelihood of security incidents, optimizes access management processes, and ensures that each user has the appropriate rights at all times.

It is a wise investment for any organization looking to optimize its identity and access management.

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