Managing identities and access rights across the networks, systems, and resources of your organization poses a continuous challenge, impacting IT departments, security teams, and business owners. This challenge becomes even more complex with new technologies and the continual rise in users. As organizations adopt new tools and platforms to support their operations, they must adapt their identity governance strategies to accommodate these changes effectively.

The goal of Identity Governance is to align with the organization’s business requirements by leveraging technology to ensure that users have the right access to the right resources, adhering to the principle of least privilege. This principal aids in minimizing the risk of unauthorized access, enhancing your organization’s overall security posture.

Implementing an identity governance solution is crucial for simplifying user management. By establishing a well-structured identity governance framework, you can define clear guidelines regarding who can access which resources and when. Identity Governance works across your diverse landscape, allowing you to grant access according to changing security and business priorities. Essential to this framework are well-defined data policies, which outline rules for authenticating, authorizing, and managing identities.

Data policies operate by scanning your identity data sources, such as directories, databases, applications, cloud services, and comparing them against predefined rules and conditions defined by your organization. For example, organizations can craft data policies designed to detect instances where a user maintains multiple accounts within the same system or where access rights infringe upon their designated role or job function. When identifying these violations, data policies will trigger alerts, generating tickets, revoking access privileges, or initiating predefined workflows for resolution.

While the significance of periodic access reviews cannot be overstated, adopting a continuous compliance approach serves to complement and elevate these efforts. This enables organizations to quickly respond to environmental changes crucial for preserving data integrity, enhancing security, and alleviating the burden on your compliance team.

To learn more about how data policies are created and how they work, please watch the video below as it demonstrates how NetIQ Identity Governance leverages data policies to achieve efficient governance:

Further insights into the power data policies are available on NetIQ Unplugged, featuring micro certifications as a remediation and workflow as remediation. These additional videos take you even further on how you can leverage data policies to optimize governance practices within your organization.