Ad Image

What is Identity Governance Administration and Why is it Important?

What is Identity Governance Administration

What is Identity Governance Administration

The editors at Solutions Review have answered the question “what is identity governance administration” and summarized some of the reasons that make it important.

In organizations, increasing digitization means more devices connected to the Internet, excessive users, and large amounts of data spread across on-premises and remote environments. It can be challenging to manage user identities and access effectively in such a complex IT environment. Additionally, if users have unnecessary or excessive excess to data, applications, and systems, it increases security risks and makes organizations more vulnerable to data breaches and cyber-attacks.  

With identity governance and administration (IGA) tools, the security workforce can track and control user access for cloud-based and on-premises systems, ensure that legitimate users are the only ones with access to systems and data, and detect unauthorized access. By implementing the proper security measures with IGA, organizations can reduce the risks of cyber threats and maintain regulatory compliance. 

This article will discuss identity governance and administration (IGA) and its importance. Let’s get started. 

What is Identity Governance Administration?


Identity Governance and Administration, also known as identity security, is at the center of IT operations that enable and secure digital entities for all applications, users, and data. It lets organizations provide automated access to a rapidly-growing number of technology assets and makes it easier to manage potential compliance and security risks. IGA is a policy-based method to identity management and access control that’s capable of efficiently mitigating risks and improving compliance across the entire organization. 

Understanding IGA starts with two parts: identity governance and identity administration. The first addresses role management, segregation of duties, analytics, logging, and reporting. Meanwhile, identity management addresses user and device provisioning, account and credential administration, and entitlement management. You can improve compliance and reduce risks by combining both and enabling functionality beyond the scope of conventional identity and access management (IAM) systems.

With Identity Governance and Administration, organizations can 

  • Streamline user identity lifecycle management 
  • Reduce risks through optimized security and compliance 
  • Perform detailed analysis. event logging, and reporting 
  • Scale their processes efficiently 

Business Security Problems Addressed by IGA 

Identity governance and administration (IGA) can effectively help your company address today’s complex business challenges while balancing these critical objectives. For example, some of the most valuable things an IGA solution can do include:

  • Strengthen security and reduce risk 
  • Reduce operational cost 
  • Deliver efficient and fast access to business 
  • Optimize audit performance and compliance 

Widget not in any sidebars

Why is Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) Important? 

Organizations embracing digital transformation require a consistent architecture for operationally governing and managing their rapidly-evolving digital ecosystem. IGA aims to ensure authorized access when and where it is needed. It’s a branch of IAM that deals with making appropriate decisions regarding access management. It allows organizations to reap the benefits of hyper-connectivity and ensure only authorized people can access critical data and systems. Ultimately, identity governance and administration solutions improve an organization’s security posture and provide valuable insights regarding employees’ activities and requirements.

Here are some benefits provided by identity governance and administration. 

Regulatory Compliance 

With regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) prioritizing and mandating data security, organizations are focusing on access management issues more than ever. Restricting access to authorized users is not only a crucial step, but it’s becoming critical to stay in compliance with these regulations.  

IGA solutions help organizations ensure that access to sensitive information is strictly controlled. An effective IGA solution makes the required periodic review and attestation effective and business-friendly. Moreover, it has built-in reporting abilities to meet relevant industry and government regulations.  

Streamline Budget and Time 

We all want to do more with less. Manual processes for identity and access management can be an unviable burden for IT. It takes far more time to provide access manually and often comes with additional tickets or help desk calls if these changes are done incorrectly or take too long. Reporting requirements and documentation add more complexity and effort. Moreover, certifying privileged access becomes time-consuming for managers. Carelessness in these tasks can lead to costly mistakes. However, identity governance and administration solutions reduce these time management and cost issues and help accomplish these tasks with greater accuracy. 

Automates Labor-Intensive Processes 

IGA cuts operational costs by automating labor-intensive tasks, such as user provisioning, access requests, and password management. Automation allows IT admins to save time with automated tasks and fulfills requirements of higher importance. Many identity governance and administration tools provide a simple interface through which users can assist their needs and independently address service requests without the admin’s involvement. IGA tools offer a dashboard with analytical data and metrics on user access control and help organizations reduce associated risks. 

Identify Potential Risks and Strengthen Security 

Organizations face significant cyber threats from compromised identities triggered by vulnerable, stolen, or default user credentials. With a comprehensive and compromised overview of user identities and privileged access, IGA solutions empower IT administrations to detect weak controls, improper access, and policy violations that can open businesses to disruptive risks and rectify risk factors before they escalate. Moreover, it keeps track of user identities and enables you to detect compromised accounts, strengthening the security of your assets. 

Identity and Governance Administration (IGA) Use Cases 

  • IGA provides visual access across your organization. A centralized view gives complete visibility into data and application access across your extended enterprise. 
  • IGA solutions create and manage campaigns and certifications to meet compliance business use cases. 
  • Identity analytics is one of the most common use cases of IGA. It includes privileged account discovery, monitoring, and reporting. It leverages machine learning algorithms to define, review, and verify accounts and their entitlements for access.  
  • Due to strict regulatory controls that make compliance difficult, enterprises need Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) solutions with robust out-of-the-box reporting. 
  • IGA solutions discover common usage patterns and establish an optimized role model and hierarchy that provide user access to required resources. It performs role mining, assessment, and modeling using alternative approaches to discover the best algorithms to balance resource coverage. 

Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) provides an identity foundation empowering today’s most crucial security initiatives, including digital transformation, zero trust, and cyber resilience. Organizations can benefit from IGA solutions to optimize security and increase visibility into what users can and can not access. This helps admins streamline identity and access management control, protect business-critical data and systems, and mitigate risks efficiently. Moreover, IGA helps improve compliance regulations. In today’s complex cybersecurity landscape, identity governance and administration tools empower businesses to protect themselves, achieve scalable growth, and improve cyber resilience.


Download Link to Identity Governance and Administration Buyer's Guide

Share This

Related Posts