The vast majority of organizations experience at least one challenge when it comes to identity management, and user provisioning has historically been a laborious and seemingly never-ending task for IT departments. One way to address these challenges is by automating user provisioning though it might seem daunting at the outset.

Heres how to go about automating user provisioning and understanding the long-term benefits it could provide to your organization.

In this article, user provisioning refers to the set of processes by which an IT admin creates a new user not only in the central directory service but also in all their permitted resources. This includes their laptop/workstation, email account, web apps, servers, and networks.

Ideally, a new user will have a core identity that propagates everywhere, rather than having a different identity for each resource. If an admin is able to ensure each user has one core identity, that admin has more control, security, and visibility in their environment. To take it one step further, they can automate user provisioning so that this process happens without repeated manual input. Establishing automation processes takes initial investment but has the potential to reduce manual labor, improve accuracy, tighten security, and help achieve regulatory compliance.

First, you have to identify which solution(s) youll invest in to automate user provisioning. There are a number of identity and access management (IAM) solutions that IT teams employ for user provisioning, chief among them being Microsoft Active Directory (AD). In the case of AD, the most straightforward way to do this is to seek a universal identity bridge to federate AD identities to Mac and Linux systems, web apps, and other resources that are not natively supported.

Alternatively, you can seek a comprehensive cloud identity provider that has these capabilities baked into it natively, which is a good route for organizations that are looking to reduce their on-premises infrastructure and move toward the cloud. Either way, youll want to keep in mind the suite of resources (systems, applications, networks, and files) in your organization as (Read more...)

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ROI of Automated User Provisioning - Security Boulevard