Does your company know who has access to its data?

Do you know who has access to your company's data, and whether they still need it? Effective identity management provides visibility and control over access throughout the identity lifecycle, helping reduce unnecessary privileges and protect sensitive information.

IAM controls who has access

Employees, contractors and partners need access to a growing number of applications, systems and data to do their jobs. Managing these identities and their access becomes increasingly important as IT environments grow more complex.

Identity and Access Management (IAM) helps organizations ensure that the right users have access to the right resources. Access can be assigned based on roles and responsibilities and adjusted as users join, change roles or leave the organization.

Authentication is also an important part of IAM. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) adds an additional layer of security, while access policies can take factors such as the user, device, location and risk into account before granting access.

IAM controls who has access

Identity Governance provides visibility and control

Giving users access is only part of the challenge. Organizations also need to know what access people have, why they have it and whether they still need it.

Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) provides visibility into access rights and helps organizations govern access throughout the identity lifecycle. It can support access requests and approvals, access reviews and automated provisioning and deprovisioning.

This makes it easier to answer fundamental questions:

Who has access?
What do they have access to?
Why do they have access?
Who approved it?
Do they still need it?

By regularly reviewing and adjusting access, organizations can reduce unnecessary privileges and support the principle of least privilege.

Don't forget privileged access

Some identities have access to systems, applications and data that are particularly sensitive or business critical. Administrator accounts and other privileged identities therefore require additional protection.

Privileged Access Management (PAM) helps organizations control and monitor privileged access and reduce unnecessary standing privileges. Combined with IAM and identity governance, it provides stronger control over both standard and high-risk access.

Identity security also includes non-human identities

Access is no longer limited to employees and other human users. Applications, service accounts, workloads and AI agents may also need access to systems and data.

As the number of non-human identities grows, organizations need visibility into what they can access, what permissions they have and who is responsible for them. Applying appropriate governance to both human and non-human identities helps provide a more complete picture of access across the organization.

From access to control

Knowing who has access to your data is only the beginning. Organizations need to manage and govern that access throughout the identity lifecycle.

A comprehensive identity strategy brings together IAM, identity governance and privileged access to help ensure that the right identities have the right access to the right resources at the right time.