This white paper explains why taking a business-driven approach to identity and access governance (IAG) can enable organizations to easily prove compliance, minimize risk, and enable the business to be productive.
Making Executives Accountable for IT SecuritySeccuris Inc.
How do we make executives accountable for IT Security?
Michael outlines the general challenges, details key items of concern and discusses the focus areas that can be taken to improve the daily governance of IT security in your organization.
Connecting Access Governance and Privileged Access ManagementEMC
This white paper reviews why connecting a PAM solution to an IGA solution will enable organizations to holistically control and audit access to intellectual property, regulated information and infrastructure systems.
Article written by Adil Khan, CEO at SafePaaS on how to use SOD to safeguard your business. Learn all about access controls to mitigate risk, cyberthreats and fraud within Oracle Applications.
Article "Safeguard Your Business - with access controls that mitigate the risk of cyber threats, financial misstatements and fraud in Oracle Applications." by SafePaaS CEO Adil Khan
Making Executives Accountable for IT SecuritySeccuris Inc.
How do we make executives accountable for IT Security?
Michael outlines the general challenges, details key items of concern and discusses the focus areas that can be taken to improve the daily governance of IT security in your organization.
Connecting Access Governance and Privileged Access ManagementEMC
This white paper reviews why connecting a PAM solution to an IGA solution will enable organizations to holistically control and audit access to intellectual property, regulated information and infrastructure systems.
Article written by Adil Khan, CEO at SafePaaS on how to use SOD to safeguard your business. Learn all about access controls to mitigate risk, cyberthreats and fraud within Oracle Applications.
Article "Safeguard Your Business - with access controls that mitigate the risk of cyber threats, financial misstatements and fraud in Oracle Applications." by SafePaaS CEO Adil Khan
Identity Access Management(IAM) - Government Market ReportResearchFox
Identity Access Management(IAM) has been widely accepted nowadays across verticals as most of the technologies (Hardware and software) are running different operating systems and applications. Moreover, these applications are hosted by a 3rd party remote vendor and are accessed remotely. Also with the rise in cyber attacks and security breach most of the administrations and IT departments are working in a synchronized way across different organizations. Hence IAM providers need to provide solutions with the right mix of compatibility, accessibility and limited cost. Avail the sample market report by visiting here: https://www.researchfox.com/reports/identity-access-management-iam&market-report
Avail the complete report at discounted price of 500$
Customer IAM vs Employee IAM (Legacy IAM)Ubisecure
Internal or enterprise IAM solutions are driven by the HR systems and concentrate on provisioning. Customer IAM solutions provide flexibility and features that facilitate the management of external users. CIAM is a tool to increase capture & conversion, reduce cost, improve the customer experience and journey.
Managing cloud IAM in a hybrid environment means using a complex set of one-off procedures. As companies add more cloud services to their IT environments, the process of managing identities is getting more complex.
The Future of IT: A Zero Maintenance StrategyCognizant
IT organizations walk a fine line in optimizing both maintenance and opportunity costs but our structured approach ensures operational excellence by emphasizing the need to run technical, operational, functional and knowledge "debts" and calibrate applications on business throughput.
Information Systems Audit is now an emerging field for Chartered Accountants and other Auditing Professionals. This presentation describes in brief the relation between Internal Controls and IS Audit. This is a basic presentation for understanding the concept of IS Audit for those who are new into the field.
Please send in your valuable suggestions and comments to mailme@bharathraob.com
IT Security at the Speed of Business: Security Provisioning with Symantec Dat...Symantec
Today’s data centers are transitioning into software-defined data centers (SDDC). In the SDDC, the core elements of the infrastructure—storage, server and compute, networking, databases, and business applications—are virtualized and delivered as services. The deployment, provisioning, configuration, management and operation of the entire infrastructure is abstracted from hardware and implemented through software. The infrastructure resources across the stack are application-centric, and customers have the ability to provision IT assets across their public cloud, private cloud, and on-premise domains. These SDDC capabilities are intended to enhance an enterprise’s ability to quickly respond to new opportunities and emerging threats.
Technology career opportunties within the insurance industryRachel Acker
This is a look inside the Technology careers available within the Insurance Industry. Concluded with detailed explanations of Business Processes, Databases, Privacy, and other business technical terms.
Identity Access Management(IAM) - Government Market ReportResearchFox
Identity Access Management(IAM) has been widely accepted nowadays across verticals as most of the technologies (Hardware and software) are running different operating systems and applications. Moreover, these applications are hosted by a 3rd party remote vendor and are accessed remotely. Also with the rise in cyber attacks and security breach most of the administrations and IT departments are working in a synchronized way across different organizations. Hence IAM providers need to provide solutions with the right mix of compatibility, accessibility and limited cost. Avail the sample market report by visiting here: https://www.researchfox.com/reports/identity-access-management-iam&market-report
Avail the complete report at discounted price of 500$
Customer IAM vs Employee IAM (Legacy IAM)Ubisecure
Internal or enterprise IAM solutions are driven by the HR systems and concentrate on provisioning. Customer IAM solutions provide flexibility and features that facilitate the management of external users. CIAM is a tool to increase capture & conversion, reduce cost, improve the customer experience and journey.
Managing cloud IAM in a hybrid environment means using a complex set of one-off procedures. As companies add more cloud services to their IT environments, the process of managing identities is getting more complex.
The Future of IT: A Zero Maintenance StrategyCognizant
IT organizations walk a fine line in optimizing both maintenance and opportunity costs but our structured approach ensures operational excellence by emphasizing the need to run technical, operational, functional and knowledge "debts" and calibrate applications on business throughput.
Information Systems Audit is now an emerging field for Chartered Accountants and other Auditing Professionals. This presentation describes in brief the relation between Internal Controls and IS Audit. This is a basic presentation for understanding the concept of IS Audit for those who are new into the field.
Please send in your valuable suggestions and comments to mailme@bharathraob.com
IT Security at the Speed of Business: Security Provisioning with Symantec Dat...Symantec
Today’s data centers are transitioning into software-defined data centers (SDDC). In the SDDC, the core elements of the infrastructure—storage, server and compute, networking, databases, and business applications—are virtualized and delivered as services. The deployment, provisioning, configuration, management and operation of the entire infrastructure is abstracted from hardware and implemented through software. The infrastructure resources across the stack are application-centric, and customers have the ability to provision IT assets across their public cloud, private cloud, and on-premise domains. These SDDC capabilities are intended to enhance an enterprise’s ability to quickly respond to new opportunities and emerging threats.
Technology career opportunties within the insurance industryRachel Acker
This is a look inside the Technology careers available within the Insurance Industry. Concluded with detailed explanations of Business Processes, Databases, Privacy, and other business technical terms.
TechBook: IMS on z/OS Using EMC Symmetrix Storage SystemsEMC
This EMC Engineering TechBook provides a general description of EMC products that can be used for IMS administration on z/OS. Using EMC products to manage IMS environments can reduce database and storage management administration, reduce CPU resource consumption, and reduce the time required to clone, backup, or recover IMS systems.
EMC Isilon Best Practices for Hadoop Data StorageEMC
This white paper describes the best practices for setting up and managing the HDFS service on an Isilon cluster to optimize data storage for Hadoop analytics.
Make your presentations stick (2): Magnficient MetaphorsHelena T Cullina
Tutorial 2 in the mini-series of Make Your Presentations Stick. Metaphors make your presentations memorable, but to get the most impact, make sure you follow these hot tips!
IT Financial Transparency: EMC’s Successful Journey to Achieving Enterprise C...EMC
This white paper documents EMC IT's progress from planning for financial transparency to executing enterprise-wide chargeback, transforming them into a service provider adept at mapping IT investments to corporate priorities.
Improve Patient Care and Reduce IT Costs with Vendor Neutral Archiving and Cl...EMC
This paper illustrates how Vendor Neutral Archive combined Atmos cloud storage enable healthcare organizations to break down PACS silos to reduce storage and archive costs, and provide secure, anywhere access to medical images on any device at the point of care.
SBIC Report : Transforming Information Security: Future-Proofing ProcessesEMC
This report from the Security for Business Innovation Council (SBIC), sponsored by RSA, contends that keeping pace with cyber threats requires an overhaul of information-security processes and provides actionable guidance for change.
Streamlining Identity and Access Management through Unified Identity and Acce...happiestmindstech
Effective identity and access management enables private and public enterprises to manage identities and access in and out of the business boundaries to meet various business objectives. The benefits of IAM are more
or less the same for organizations irrespective of the nature of business. Similarly, the challenges and issues associated with IAM are similar to all industry segments.
Data-Centric Security for the Extended EnterpriseNextLabs, Inc.
Yesterday’s security is no match for the challenge of protecting data across the extended enterprise, with sensitive data increasingly shared across organizations, over external systems, and with unknown users and devices.
A basic shift towards data-centric thinking must replace conventional device- and container-based models. But where do organizations start? What assumptions must change?
This white paper outlines FOUR changes organizations must make to achieve data-centric security, and explains why IT Leaders, Security Professionals, and Compliance Officers should care. This paper then provides a brief overview of the NextLabs approach to Information Risk Management.
Need of Adaptive Authentication in defending the borderless Enterprisehardik soni
ProactEye Adaptive Access & Identity Management solution can help administrators consolidate, control, and simplify access privileges. Privileges can be simplified and controlled irrespective of critical applications hosted in traditional data centres, private clouds, public clouds, or a hybrid combination of all these spaces.
White Paper: Don't Let Your Corporate Strategy be Hostage to Your IT StrategyGigya
Digital innovation being demanded by every business unit is transforming IT’s role to that of the main driver of new growth initiatives, prompting a shift in perspective and strategy for CIOs that begins with a well-planned and executed approach to managing customer identities. While legacy IAM might seem like a natural starting point for meeting this challenge, customer identity and access management (CIAM) has significantly different requirements and outcomes when compared to employee-facing IAM.
How Can Enterprise App Development Help Your Business Growth.pptxXDuce Corporation
Organizations have seen growth in the demand for enterprise app development. It has made
developers build multiple apps that help their clients to grow business with enterprise
applications. Such as Automated billing systems, Payment processing systems, Email
marketing systems, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource
Planning (ERP), Business Continuity Planning (BCP), Enterprise Application Integration
(EAI), Enterprise Content Management, Enterprise Messaging Systems (EMS), HR
Management
SAP Compliance Management Demystified | SymmetrySymmetry™
Executives often view compliance and compliance management with a mixture of confusion and dread. To benefit from SAP compliance, you need to understand how it’s structured, and how it fits into your SAP landscape and your business as a whole.
How Can Enterprise App Development Help Your Business Growth.pdfXDuce Corporation
Enterprise application development is the process of creating and deploying scalable and
reliable apps to help enterprises streamline their business operations, improve productivity,
lower costs, and so on. Enterprise app development is possible to develop for both internal
and external use. Enterprise app development helps a business in many ways. The significant
advantage of enterprise app development services is that it provides the ability to store a
massive amount of informatio
Roadmap to SAP® Security and Compliance | SymmetrySymmetry™
Executives often view security and compliance management with a mixture of confusion and dread. The tragedy is that compliance rules are designed to protect your assets, security, clients and reputation. When they use the threat of civil and criminal liability, it’s primarily to get you to do things you should be doing anyway. But to benefit from compliance, you need to understand how it’s structured, and how it fits into your SAP landscape and your business as a whole.
Identity Management: Front and Center for Healthcare ProvidersAndrew Ames
In 2009, the HITECH Act introduced an added level of complexity and opportunity. Specifically, increased regulations and requirements with associated penalties (cost and risk avoidance factor) as well as the opportunity for government reimbursement is driving many Healthcare provider organizations with consider IAM as a strategic initiative.
Audit and Compliance – External auditors wanted to know:
• ‘Who has access to what?’
• ‘Who approved the request?’
• ‘Is the access correct?’
An Easy question but, with thousands of staff members and hundreds of applications, it as an overwhelming burden and one that’s nearly impossible is Healthcare Providers don’t take a strategic long-term approach, and consume the properly aligned technology.
INDUSTRY-LEADING TECHNOLOGY FOR LONG TERM RETENTION OF BACKUPS IN THE CLOUDEMC
CloudBoost is a cloud-enabling solution from EMC
Facilitates secure, automatic, efficient data transfer to private and public clouds for Long-Term Retention (LTR) of backups. Seamlessly extends existing data protection solutions to elastic, resilient, scale-out cloud storage
Transforming Desktop Virtualization with Citrix XenDesktop and EMC XtremIOEMC
With EMC XtremIO all-flash array, improve
1) your competitive agility with real-time analytics & development
2) your infrastructure agility with elastic provisioning for performance & capacity
3) your TCO with 50% lower capex and opex and double the storage lifecycle.
• Citrix & EMC XtremIO: Better Together
• XtremIO Design Fundamentals for VDI
• Citrix XenDesktop & XtremIO
-- Image Management & Storage
-- Demonstrations
-- XtremIO XenDesktop Integration
EMC FORUM RESEARCH GLOBAL RESULTS - 10,451 RESPONSES ACROSS 33 COUNTRIES EMC
Explore findings from the EMC Forum IT Study and learn how cloud computing, social, mobile, and big data megatrends are shaping IT as a business driver globally.
Reference architecture with MIRANTIS OPENSTACK PLATFORM.The changes that are going on in IT with disruptions from technology, business and culture and so IT to solve the issues has to change from moving from traditional models to broker provider model.
Force Cyber Criminals to Shop Elsewhere
Learn the value of having an Identity Management and Governance solution and how retailers today are benefiting by strengthening their defenses and bolstering their Identity Management capabilities.
Container-based technology has experienced a recent revival and is becoming adopted at an explosive rate. For those that are new to the conversation, containers offer a way to virtualize an operating system. This virtualization isolates processes, providing limited visibility and resource utilization to each, such that the processes appear to be running on separate machines. In short, allowing more applications to run on a single machine. Here is a brief timeline of key moments in container history.
This white paper provides an overview of EMC's data protection solutions for the data lake - an active repository to manage varied and complex Big Data workloads
This infographic highlights key stats and messages from the analyst report from J.Gold Associates that addresses the growing economic impact of mobile cybercrime and fraud.
This white paper describes how an intelligence-driven governance, risk management, and compliance (GRC) model can create an efficient, collaborative enterprise GRC strategy across IT, Finance, Operations, and Legal areas.
The Trust Paradox: Access Management and Trust in an Insecure AgeEMC
This white paper discusses the results of a CIO UK survey on a“Trust Paradox,” defined as employees and business partners being both the weakest link in an organization’s security as well as trusted agents in achieving the company’s goals.
Search and Society: Reimagining Information Access for Radical FuturesBhaskar Mitra
The field of Information retrieval (IR) is currently undergoing a transformative shift, at least partly due to the emerging applications of generative AI to information access. In this talk, we will deliberate on the sociotechnical implications of generative AI for information access. We will argue that there is both a critical necessity and an exciting opportunity for the IR community to re-center our research agendas on societal needs while dismantling the artificial separation between the work on fairness, accountability, transparency, and ethics in IR and the rest of IR research. Instead of adopting a reactionary strategy of trying to mitigate potential social harms from emerging technologies, the community should aim to proactively set the research agenda for the kinds of systems we should build inspired by diverse explicitly stated sociotechnical imaginaries. The sociotechnical imaginaries that underpin the design and development of information access technologies needs to be explicitly articulated, and we need to develop theories of change in context of these diverse perspectives. Our guiding future imaginaries must be informed by other academic fields, such as democratic theory and critical theory, and should be co-developed with social science scholars, legal scholars, civil rights and social justice activists, and artists, among others.
Let's dive deeper into the world of ODC! Ricardo Alves (OutSystems) will join us to tell all about the new Data Fabric. After that, Sezen de Bruijn (OutSystems) will get into the details on how to best design a sturdy architecture within ODC.
GraphRAG is All You need? LLM & Knowledge GraphGuy Korland
Guy Korland, CEO and Co-founder of FalkorDB, will review two articles on the integration of language models with knowledge graphs.
1. Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.08302
2. Microsoft Research's GraphRAG paper and a review paper on various uses of knowledge graphs:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/graphrag-unlocking-llm-discovery-on-narrative-private-data/
State of ICS and IoT Cyber Threat Landscape Report 2024 previewPrayukth K V
The IoT and OT threat landscape report has been prepared by the Threat Research Team at Sectrio using data from Sectrio, cyber threat intelligence farming facilities spread across over 85 cities around the world. In addition, Sectrio also runs AI-based advanced threat and payload engagement facilities that serve as sinks to attract and engage sophisticated threat actors, and newer malware including new variants and latent threats that are at an earlier stage of development.
The latest edition of the OT/ICS and IoT security Threat Landscape Report 2024 also covers:
State of global ICS asset and network exposure
Sectoral targets and attacks as well as the cost of ransom
Global APT activity, AI usage, actor and tactic profiles, and implications
Rise in volumes of AI-powered cyberattacks
Major cyber events in 2024
Malware and malicious payload trends
Cyberattack types and targets
Vulnerability exploit attempts on CVEs
Attacks on counties – USA
Expansion of bot farms – how, where, and why
In-depth analysis of the cyber threat landscape across North America, South America, Europe, APAC, and the Middle East
Why are attacks on smart factories rising?
Cyber risk predictions
Axis of attacks – Europe
Systemic attacks in the Middle East
Download the full report from here:
https://sectrio.com/resources/ot-threat-landscape-reports/sectrio-releases-ot-ics-and-iot-security-threat-landscape-report-2024/
The Art of the Pitch: WordPress Relationships and SalesLaura Byrne
Clients don’t know what they don’t know. What web solutions are right for them? How does WordPress come into the picture? How do you make sure you understand scope and timeline? What do you do if sometime changes?
All these questions and more will be explored as we talk about matching clients’ needs with what your agency offers without pulling teeth or pulling your hair out. Practical tips, and strategies for successful relationship building that leads to closing the deal.
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 4DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 4. In this session, we will cover Test Manager overview along with SAP heatmap.
The UiPath Test Manager overview with SAP heatmap webinar offers a concise yet comprehensive exploration of the role of a Test Manager within SAP environments, coupled with the utilization of heatmaps for effective testing strategies.
Participants will gain insights into the responsibilities, challenges, and best practices associated with test management in SAP projects. Additionally, the webinar delves into the significance of heatmaps as a visual aid for identifying testing priorities, areas of risk, and resource allocation within SAP landscapes. Through this session, attendees can expect to enhance their understanding of test management principles while learning practical approaches to optimize testing processes in SAP environments using heatmap visualization techniques
What will you get from this session?
1. Insights into SAP testing best practices
2. Heatmap utilization for testing
3. Optimization of testing processes
4. Demo
Topics covered:
Execution from the test manager
Orchestrator execution result
Defect reporting
SAP heatmap example with demo
Speaker:
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
Software Delivery At the Speed of AI: Inflectra Invests In AI-Powered QualityInflectra
In this insightful webinar, Inflectra explores how artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming software development and testing. Discover how AI-powered tools are revolutionizing every stage of the software development lifecycle (SDLC), from design and prototyping to testing, deployment, and monitoring.
Learn about:
• The Future of Testing: How AI is shifting testing towards verification, analysis, and higher-level skills, while reducing repetitive tasks.
• Test Automation: How AI-powered test case generation, optimization, and self-healing tests are making testing more efficient and effective.
• Visual Testing: Explore the emerging capabilities of AI in visual testing and how it's set to revolutionize UI verification.
• Inflectra's AI Solutions: See demonstrations of Inflectra's cutting-edge AI tools like the ChatGPT plugin and Azure Open AI platform, designed to streamline your testing process.
Whether you're a developer, tester, or QA professional, this webinar will give you valuable insights into how AI is shaping the future of software delivery.
"Impact of front-end architecture on development cost", Viktor TurskyiFwdays
I have heard many times that architecture is not important for the front-end. Also, many times I have seen how developers implement features on the front-end just following the standard rules for a framework and think that this is enough to successfully launch the project, and then the project fails. How to prevent this and what approach to choose? I have launched dozens of complex projects and during the talk we will analyze which approaches have worked for me and which have not.
Builder.ai Founder Sachin Dev Duggal's Strategic Approach to Create an Innova...Ramesh Iyer
In today's fast-changing business world, Companies that adapt and embrace new ideas often need help to keep up with the competition. However, fostering a culture of innovation takes much work. It takes vision, leadership and willingness to take risks in the right proportion. Sachin Dev Duggal, co-founder of Builder.ai, has perfected the art of this balance, creating a company culture where creativity and growth are nurtured at each stage.
Transcript: Selling digital books in 2024: Insights from industry leaders - T...BookNet Canada
The publishing industry has been selling digital audiobooks and ebooks for over a decade and has found its groove. What’s changed? What has stayed the same? Where do we go from here? Join a group of leading sales peers from across the industry for a conversation about the lessons learned since the popularization of digital books, best practices, digital book supply chain management, and more.
Link to video recording: https://bnctechforum.ca/sessions/selling-digital-books-in-2024-insights-from-industry-leaders/
Presented by BookNet Canada on May 28, 2024, with support from the Department of Canadian Heritage.
PHP Frameworks: I want to break free (IPC Berlin 2024)Ralf Eggert
In this presentation, we examine the challenges and limitations of relying too heavily on PHP frameworks in web development. We discuss the history of PHP and its frameworks to understand how this dependence has evolved. The focus will be on providing concrete tips and strategies to reduce reliance on these frameworks, based on real-world examples and practical considerations. The goal is to equip developers with the skills and knowledge to create more flexible and future-proof web applications. We'll explore the importance of maintaining autonomy in a rapidly changing tech landscape and how to make informed decisions in PHP development.
This talk is aimed at encouraging a more independent approach to using PHP frameworks, moving towards a more flexible and future-proof approach to PHP development.
2. TABLE OF CONTENTS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 3
TODAY’S REALITY: FAILED IDENTITY MANAGEMENT 3
THE IMPORTANCE OF BUSINESS CONTEXT 3
BUSINESS-DRIVEN IDENTITY AND ACCESS GOVERNANCE
REQUIREMENTS 4
PHASED APPROACH TO BUSINESS-DRIVEN IDENTITY AND ACCESS
GOVERNANCE 5
SUMMARY 6
3. 3
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
For years, information security and line-of-business managers have intuitively known that identity and
access governance (IAG) must be driven by business requirements. After all, business managers know
best “who should have access to what.”
But all too often, organizations’ tools and processes don’t reflect this “business context.” These
systems typically lack support for a business view of users’ access and their business roles and
responsibilities. They also generally don’t reflect fine-grained entitlements that determine specifically
which actions users may take within applications. This is usually due to organizations attempting to use
technical, IT-focused identity and access management (IAM) tools to attempt to solve business-
focused governance problems.
Business context is the sum total of everything an organization knows about its users, their job
responsibilities, and the information, applications and entitlements they need. While some context is
contained within IT-managed systems (such as directories and HR applications), additional context is
also held by the managers who supervise users or by the owners of business functions, applications
and data, not by the IT or security staff.
This white paper explains why today’s identity management systems fail to properly reflect business
context, why embracing a business-driven approach to identity and access governance reduces costs
while increasing security, and describes a step-by-step methodology for implementing it.
TODAY’S REALITY: FAILED IDENTITY MANAGEMENT
Today’s organizations face more security threats and regulatory challenges than ever, not to mention
an exploding user population, the proliferation of mobile devices, and the potential damage to
shareholder value and reputation that would result from a data breach. Yet, not only are traditional
identity and access governance (IAG) systems failing to keep up, they are falling behind the need to
proactively manage an ever-changing risk and threat landscape. Traditional IAG architectures are
fragmented, complex, and ill-equipped to deal with the pace of change in an organization, from simple
employee transfers to restructuring, new regulatory requirements and mergers and acquisitions. In
addition, traditional identity systems have consistently been prohibitively expensive to deploy and
operate, limiting their breadth of coverage and effectiveness.
Cloud computing increases complexity by creating a new application silo (and more administrators with
privileged access) for every new cloud application and cloud service provider. It also increases the rate
of change, as lines of business obtain new services, often without informing the central IT or security
groups. Mobile computing and the “bring your own device” trend create yet more identity and access
governance silos to accommodate each new platform.
The result is that even as organizations need easier, faster and more consistent IAG, the pace of
change makes their compliance and risk posture ever less certain. Relying on siloed, reactive,
incomplete systems make it even harder to discover and apply the business context needed for each
application or group of systems, and the lack of a single, central IAG infrastructure even more critical.
Organizations need to easily prove compliance, minimize risk and enable the business to be productive.
In the face of all these challenges, the key to solving these problems is to leverage a centralized,
modern identity and access governance system built around business context.
THE IMPORTANCE OF BUSINESS CONTEXT
Business context is the often-forgotten, but key ingredient to assure effective, enterprise-wide IAG. It
is often overlooked because IAM and IAG are usually handled by the CIO, CISO, VP of Security or
Director of Security. None have the business context required for efficient, effective enterprise-wide
access governance. Most of this business context lies instead with the supervisors and other business
4. 4
managers who understand the specific responsibilities various users have, and the access each
requires.
Consider, for example, a finance department with five employees, each with Analyst Level 2 job codes.
The IT department might conclude each should have the same access rights and entitlements.
However, their supervisor knows who is responsible for travel and entertainment spending, and who
monitors telecommunications and utility expenses, and can thus make more accurate access and
entitlement decisions for them. Different members of a clinical drug trial team might have the same
job titles, but require different levels of access to test data depending on their seniority, training, or
project assignments.
Business application owners are also well-equipped to understand how applications or data resources
are used and what access and entitlement policies are appropriate for them. Application owners, along
with risk, audit and compliance teams, have the best context for setting IAG policies specific to various
business applications or industry domains. And data resource owners know best who should have
access to sensitive or regulated data.
To apply this context most effectively, organizations must enable business managers, business
application and data owners, and the audit, risk and compliance teams to drive access-related policy
requirements. IT must then translate those requirements into operational activities. Achieving this
business-driven identity and access governance requires new processes and new technology, and it
requires the business to partner with IT.
BUSINESS-DRIVEN IDENTITY AND ACCESS GOVERNANCE
REQUIREMENTS
To bring business context into the IAG process, IT must transform the cryptic jargon of application and
infrastructure entitlements into a business-friendly view of access and give business managers a
simple, intuitive way to make IAG decisions throughout the identity and access lifecycle.
Business-driven IAG also requires that the lines-of-business (LOBs) take ownership of the tasks that
they have the context for, and become accountable for them. Audit, risk and compliance teams must
be able to create requirements, measure results and institute controls. IT security and operations
teams must have visibility into and control over how IAG activities are conducted, since they are
ultimately responsible for carrying out the decisions made by LOBs.
Organizations must be able to easily define policies which leverage business context, assuring
compliance in areas such as segregation-of-duties (SOD) or access request and approval. Once a policy
has been instantiated, it can be applied automatically and violations dealt with automatically. Since
the contents of these policies will be familiar to LOBs, IT Security and Operations, Audit, Risk and
Compliance teams, this is a very effective way to engage them in the IAG process.
Automating the fulfillment of access changes can significantly reduce cost and effort, because to date,
organizations have typically struggled to achieve the required automation with IT-focused tools from
traditional identity management vendors. A truly business-driven approach to IAG provides a simple
access change management mechanism that keeps business logic separate from application-specific
integration logic. It also enables policy-based access changes, using rules and workflows to deliver
quicker access in line with established policies. This enables a cost-effective and rapid method for on-
boarding applications from a change fulfillment perspective.
All of this requires an automated, centralized identity and access governance platform, which gives
business owners a simple view of identities and access, enables automated, policy-based access
controls, fulfills IAG change requests, and builds proactive access compliance into the fabric of the
organization. Figure 1 illustrates how such a platform enables an organization to establish business
processes to accomplish all of these activities.
5. 5
PHASED APPROACH TO BUSINESS-DRIVEN IDENTITY AND ACCESS
GOVERNANCE
Business-driven IAG is best made operational by implementing discrete, measurable business
processes in a step-by-step phased approach that delivers value in each phase. The steps are:
Visibility and Certification: This repeatable, sustainable process automatically collects and cleanses
identity and entitlement data to obtain a single unified and normalized view of current access rights.
This technical view of access is transformed into a business view so that LOB managers, such as
supervisors or business owners of resources, can become accountable for reviewing access rights. This
happens via a business user-friendly access certification process (also known as an access review),
where people’s entitlements are reviewed and approved (or revoked) by a supervisor or application
owner.
One important additional step, which is also a good example of establishing business context, is
identifying the business owners of data resources (such as file shares, or SharePoint sites), as well as
any metadata that defines its business purpose and risk classification.
Policy Management: Capturing decision-making context and business logic in a set of policies
defined as rules is an excellent way to automate security and compliance controls. Having rules trigger
workflows provides process and policy automation, and reduces costs.
For example, the identification of a new employee can trigger a multi-step process that includes
creating accounts for the employee, providing her with appropriate group memberships, assigning the
accounts appropriate entitlements to applications and data and obtaining the necessary approvals.
Role Management: Roles enable business managers to more easily manage entitlement changes.
Consider the role of Bond Trader Level 2. A user in this role might be entitled to 35 different fine-
grained entitlements (such as the ability to make trades up to a certain limit) across several
applications. Rather than requiring a manager to review and evaluate each of the 35 entitlements, the
manager can simply verify that the role is correct for the person. This is an easier and more natural
way for the manager to apply the needed business context because they are thinking about the role
played by a specific person, not about a detailed list of application entitlements.
Roles also simplify Joiner, Mover and Leaver processes and make it easier to assign users additional
access. They also make it more efficient to review, validate or test user access to simplify compliance
and risk management and speed up fulfillment.
This phase also produces processes for lifecycle management of directory groups, which are often used
to govern access (especially to data resources) in much the same way as roles.
Often, organizations do not want to dive right into creating and managing Roles. Another alternative
to consider is using suggested entitlements, which can provide choices to a business manager about
what entitlements similar users have during the Joiner or Mover processes.
6. 6
Access Request Management: Once a business view of access and the abstractions to simplify and
automate access management are in place, an organization is in a good position to establish a self-
service access request front-end for business users, and an auditable and policy-compliant change
management engine for IT on the backend. This process empowers LOBs to invoke access requests
without any knowledge of the infrastructure and details involved in servicing the requests, therefore
easing the access request process. It also provides proactive compliance by enforcing policies before
access is granted.
Change Fulfillment (Provisioning): Business-driven changes to identity and access result in actual
modifications to user accounts, group memberships and entitlement assignments in systems, data
resources, directories, applications and access control solutions. Change fulfillment – which may be
referred to as provisioning -- is a process that usually exists in some form before an organization
embarks on any of the phases mentioned here. The challenge is typically about evolving the process
so that it is consistent, policy-driven, at the entitlement level and as much as possible, automated.
There are several mechanisms for fulfilling access changes. A simple task notification, such as an email
to a system administrator, is often the easiest and most straightforward approach to change
fulfillment. Creating a ticket in a service desk is a more consistent way to track requests, responses
and confirmations, and can leverage an existing enterprise change management system. However, the
associated time lag, cost and error rate often drive organizations to automation. An automated
fulfillment solution delivers operational efficiency and timely changes, and ideally supports the rapid
on-boarding of new applications.
Traditional provisioning engines make it difficult to onboard (connect to) more than a few applications
because these older systems combine the business logic that defines governance policies with the logic
required to integrate with each application. This requires expensive custom coding for each new
connection, and whenever policies change. Traditional provisioning engines also tend to focus on
account-level or group-level provisioning, which doesn’t provide the necessary level of visibility or
access requirements. Modern, business-driven IAG systems maintain the policy-related business logic
at a higher level, making this “last-step” integration much easier and less expensive. And modern
business-driven IAG systems focus on deep provisioning with the ability to view and change fine-
grained entitlements in applications.
SUMMARY
Organizations cannot afford to spend any more than they must on identity and access governance. Nor
can they afford the regulatory, legal or intellectual property risks of not properly managing identity and
access governance. The road to the most efficient and effective identity and access governance runs
right through the owners of the business processes, applications and data. It uses the rich “business
context” about which users require what access and entitlements as the foundation for automated,
business-driven identity and access governance that delivers the maximum business value at the
lowest cost.