Is your legacy on-prem IGA solution vendor forcing you to migrate to the cloud? For many, this so-called upgrade to a completely different solution is anything but an improvement. So, do you grit your teeth and bear the upgrade, even if you don’t get all the functionality and flexibility you need? Or do you seek out another solution?
The silver lining: choosing a new IGA solution is a strategic opportunity to streamline productivity and bolster security. The time is now for a fresh approach, leveraging your existing IT competencies and tech stack.
As you consider all options for your next IGA program (and who wants to tell the boss they didn't consider other options), here are four things to keep in mind.
1. Don’t impact employee productivity
Successful access review and access request programs require all knowledge workers to engage with a company’s identity solution. But multiple, siloed portals and processes get confusing.
As a result, users default to workarounds like spreadsheets & email, and rubber stamp access approvals out of frustration.As any change to your IGA solution runs the risk of impacting employees, prioritize solutions that work behind the scenes in a way that’s invisible to your users. What if you picked a solution that works within existing platforms and workflows so that it’s not actually a shift for them? You automatically improve adoption and ease-of-use. Your company’s mission depends on user productivity, so making sure the user experience (UX) is optimal for both end users and administrators is vital for a successful IGA program and your overall business.
For example, direct healthcare provider Premise Health has seen the real-world impact that using an IGA solution built natively on ServiceNow has on their users and productivity. Their Cyber Security Manager, Identity & Access Governance, sums it up best: “Not only did we reduce costs and increase security, we significantly improved the lives of our team members responsible for user access.”
2. Stop ignoring the ITSM link
The average business uses 371 SaaS applications (Productiv). The role of IGA is to maintain security and minimize risk of said apps. Yet, few outside large enterprise apps have full connectors to bring them into your IGA solution. Instead, most are managed via IT Service Management (ITSM) processes or outside IT altogether. It’s a disjointed user experience (UX) that leaves workers confused and security gaps open.
Automating IGA tasks can help streamline efforts to ensure all applications are under governance in one single system or platform. By marrying IGA and ITSM within these automated workflows, tech teams can bridge once disconnected systems and better manage ALL OF their enterprise applications. This automation can also facilitate consistent auditing of access, ensuring compliance and providing governance across the entire ecosystem of applications.
3. Do More with Less
Most enterprises rely on business and IT platforms to power their business. They’re moving workloads, such as identity, security, IT operations risk & compliance, and HR, to those platforms, too. This approach subscribes to the belief that no IT function should be on an island—and to be successful, needs to align with key workflows.
With an IGA solution built within your existing platform, you can streamline processes from employee onboarding and offboarding to preparing for an audit, by simply extending existing workflows to include identity data and functionality. Aligning solutions on a single platform provides a more secure and efficient approach to IGA and more broadly to IT, thus maximizing your initial platform investment and reducing overall cost and maintenance.
For example, retail data science company 84.51° implemented an IGA solution built natively on ServiceNow, improving security, efficiency and productivity, and telecom company ATN uses Clear Skye and ServiceNow to elevate its integrated risk management program.
4. Make sure your solution can support your business processes
Many identity vendors address the high cost of deployment and management by offering SaaS versions of their application. But these solutions lack feature parity with previous solutions, and are less customizable and functional due to cloud architecture. This means if you’re forced to “upgrade,” you’re also forced to adjust business processes to fit what’s available in the new solution. Why not run your IGA solution where the work of your business gets done and forgo those painful changes?
When you run your IGA program on your existing business platform, you remove the need to choose between security, flexibility, and maintenance. This approach provides not only a common UI across a variety of IT and business areas, but also a consistent and powerful multi-instance cloud architecture with a market-leading workflow engine.
Make no mistake, changing your IGA solution will require effort, which is why you must make sure that effort can both protect and accelerate your business. At a time when data is both a prized asset and a potential liability, IGA is the key to unlocking one and protecting the other. Considering these four practices as you embark on a new solution choice can go a long way in helping maximize your identity program and all the benefits that come with it.
If you are now being forced to migrate, it’s time to reimagine enterprise identity access and risk management. Talk to us about using a familiar interface for IGA, gaining deeper identity control and insight, and truly building a bridge between the business and IT.
See how identity security built on ServiceNow works by taking a self-guided tour or scheduling a demo with Clear Skye.
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