What is identity and access automation?

What is IAM automation?

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

This process automates tasks such as creating and deleting accounts, auditing and reporting, and enforcing security policies for users and access.

Now that we've laid the groundwork for what IAM automation is, let's see the value of doing it.

Why automate your IAM?

Automation provides faster, more consistent, and less prone to human error, reducing the chances of security breaches. It also lowers 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.

Benefits for users

From the user's perspective, IT IAM automation ensures immediate and secure access to the resources they want to access. The disadvantage today lies in the fact that a user does not have access as soon as he arrives and that there are complex paths throughout his presence in the company to have new access.

Automating identity and access management is essential for any organization looking to optimize security, compliance, and efficiency.

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

The key benefits of automating identity and access management?

In short, the main advantages are:

• Reduced costs and human error
• Improved security and compliance
• Accelerate authentication and authorization processes

Improving security

IAM automation minimizes the likelihood of breaches due to human error, such as forgetfulness or incorrect entries, by consistently and flawlessly enforcing security policies. It also ensures that all access is properly authorized and monitored, reducing the chances of unauthorized or malicious access to sensitive company resources.

Reduce operational costs

By eliminating repetitive manual intervention, identity and access management allows IT teams to focus on more strategic tasks rather than day-to-day identity and access management. This translates into a significant reduction in labor costs and a decrease in the number of requests made to IT departments, which contributes to an overall 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 NIS 2) by ensuring uniform and traceable enforcement of security policies. Automated IAM solutions can easily generate detailed reports for audits, demonstrating that the necessary controls are in place and functioning properly, which is critical to meeting regulatory requirements.

Improved user experience

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

Scalability

As the organization grows, so do its identity and access management needs. 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 role of the IT administrator for user management: to optimize the resources made available to users so that they perform in their tasks and bring an effective return for the company.

It's crude but it's the reality.

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

The problem?

1. The pressure on IT departments is very high, users are constantly changing and testing new tools, they need a strong responsiveness and tend to try without referring to the IT department.
2. The flexibility of working with BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) which complicates identity and access management.
3. Provisioning and deprovisioning on the various applications is complex and error-prone. They are time-consuming and administrators have to switch from apps to apps
4. In a manual management of user accounts, the administrator will have difficulty keeping up with the pace and ensuring security. The costs will then increase: increase in dissatisfaction on the employee side (threat of resignation and demotivation), increase in the cost of licenses (not controlled), increase in accounts in error (cyber risks).

Criteria for selecting automation tools

Analyze your specific IAM needs

Start by assessing your organization's unique needs for managing your users' entitlements. Take stock of your entries and exits.

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

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

On the other hand, you are a company of less than 100 people, you don't have a large number of inputs/outputs and you don't have a large or complicated tool stack to manage, so a well-configured Excel file will be sufficient.

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

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

The constraint of SMEs and ETIs is the following: a solution that is easy to use, daily management that does not require complex and technical interventions.

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

Ensure compatibility and integration

It's critical that IAM automation tools integrate seamlessly with your existing infrastructure and applications. Look for a solution that offers integrations with corporate directories like Active Directory and can easily sync 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 have to create communication between your different applications in order to automate your accounts. If there are no 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 doesn't support your main software and applications.

Evaluate cost and return on investment (ROI)

Cost is an important factor, but it must be weighed against the benefits in terms of safety and operational efficiency. Compare the costs of different solutions and assess the potential ROI. The cost savings from reduced manual tasks and improved security can justify a higher upfront investment.

Test before you commit

Before making a final decision, organize a demonstration and pilot testing of the shortlisted tools. This will allow you to evaluate their compatibility with your environment, their usability and their real effectiveness.

Planning and deploying automation workflows

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

These workflows define: who is affected, what actions need to be taken, which applications are affected. If we take a step back, it is a question of defining the tasks that will be carried out to set up the processes in accordance with your company's policy.

Here is a way to set up your workflows. This takes up the needs very high up in the chain.

1. Define objectives and policies
   Identify the expected benefits of automation, such as reducing time spent on account management, improving security, user experience, and compliance.
   
   
2. Mapping 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 for structuring your account lifecycle management workflows.
   
   
3. Design the account provisioning workflow
   Let's move on to the practical part: design your workflows, define triggers, actions, deadlines. For example, configure Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) rules to honor the least privilege rule. Automate user provisioning and deprovisioning.
   
   
4. Test and refine workflows
   Before you deploy your workflows widely, conduct pilot tests to assess their effectiveness and compatibility with your systems. Collect user feedback and adjust workflows accordingly. Adjustments based on this feedback allow processes to be perfected before large-scale implementation.
   
   
5. Deploy, monitor and train
   Deploy workflows in stages. Train IT employees on new processes and tools to ensure successful and effective adoption. Continuously exchange to ensure that manual processes are eliminated permanently.
   Monitor the progress of workflows, logs and see if they are blocked on a step. Sometimes there is an anomaly that stops the workflow from running smoothly.

Workflows are not set in stone and they evolve over time with the revision of internal policies. You will always have to keep an eye on their relevance and recency.

How automating user lifecycle management improves enterprise security?

IAM enhances security, facilitates audits, enables regular account reviews, and ensures alignment between application access and user status in the organization.

We can then see a clear improvement in audits because they are greatly facilitated by activity logs and log analysis. All account provisioning is recorded, everything is traced which makes the systems compliant.

An IAM solution can generate regular and detailed reports on access usage, permission changes, and detected anomalies. This makes it possible to quickly provide the necessary information to auditors without intensive manual work.

The review of accounts is clearly one of the legal and security aspects relieved by Youzer that our clients like enormously. The centralization of information and accounts and 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 check that users' access rights are still in line with their current roles in the company.

Alerts and notifications are highly relevant in case of detection of inactive accounts or non-compliant permissions, automatic alerts can be sent to admins to take immediate corrective action.

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

RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) rules are managed through application packages at Youzer. The IT department defines packages based on an employee's status, position, and any misalignment will be highlighted. This also implies that predefined rules in workflows will automatically and without error dispatch each user to the right application package with the right access and rights.

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

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

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In conclusion

By integrating IAM automation, organizations can not only gain operational efficiencies but also improve 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's a smart investment for any organization looking to optimize their identity and access management.

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