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IAM Compliance: Aligning With Organization Objectives & Regulatory Obligations

Are you unsure which IAM practices will help you meet IAM compliance? If so, this article is for you. To guide you through your compliance journey, we will discuss 5 regulations and the IAM practices they mandate. We will also discuss the issues organizations encounter while complying with them and how automation can help.

What is IAM compliance? IAM compliance is the regulation that mandates organizations implement practices to manage identity and access and secure crucial data against unauthorized usage and security breaches. Organizations must enforce certain identity and access management practices to comply with IAM compliance regulations.

But which are these regulations? Which IAM practices do they mandate to enforce? Let’s find out.

5 Compliance Regulations That Mandate Identity & Access Management

Here are a few compliance regulations that mandate the implementation of identity and access management practices:

1: Sarbanes Oxley (SOX)

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act is a U.S. federal law introduced to protect investors from corporate or financial accounting fraud. To comply with SOX, publicly traded companies must implement certain mandatory identity and access management practices that help maintain financial reporting accuracy and integrity. These IAM practices include enforcing access controls like the separation of duties policy, implementing proper authentication methods, revoking user access upon termination, and conducting periodic audits of access rights and privileges.

2: Health Insurance Portability And Accountability Act (HIPAA)

HIPAA regulation is designed by the U.S. Health and Human Services department to maintain the privacy and security of PHI (protected health information). To comply with HIPAA, healthcare providers or institutes are required to implement IAM practices. These IAM practices include – implementing least privileges access control, making use of the federated identity method, regularly rotating/changing credentials, and utilizing multi-factor authentication and single-sign-on for identity verification.

3: Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)

PCI DSS is an industry-accepted regulation introduced to protect the confidentiality and integrity of credit card data. To comply with PCI DSS, credit card companies are obligated to implement IAM practices, which include limiting the number of users who can access card payment details, disabling inactive accounts of users within a set timeframe, creating a unique ID for each user, and setting up policies and procedures to manage identities.

4: General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

GDPR is a privacy and protection regulation introduced to protect EU citizens' user identity details and personal information. To comply with GDPR, companies doing business in Europe or companies handling European citizens' data are required to implement a specific set of IAM practices. These IAM practices include managing private data access and how it will be used, implementing data protection measures, utilizing identity federation, and using identity analytics.

5: ISO 27001

ISO 27001 regulation was introduced to protect crucial data against security risks or threats. To comply with ISO 27001, organizations are required to implement IAM practices, which include implementing authorization policies and access controls, managing access privileges, using identity federation, conducting risk assessments, and conducting regular access reviews.

Now that you are familiar with compliance regulations, let's understand why organizations struggle to comply with IAM compliances.

Reasons Why Organizations Struggle To Adhere To IAM Compliance

Listed below are a few reasons why businesses find it difficult to achieve IAM compliance:

Reason 1: Organizations Often Overlook To Mention How They Have Managed Access Transfer In Their Audit Report

Generally, IAM compliance regulations mandate the presentation of an audit report on how access has been managed within the organization to ensure data security and privacy.

So, most organizations present data regarding how their IT team has managed birthright access to identities and how they have revoked access to identities during termination (offboarding) in their audit reports to maintain data security.

Although they somewhat fulfill the criteria of compliance regulations, they still haven’t touched all the aspects of the IAM compliance requirements. How?

These regulations demand a complete report covering how access has been managed in all situations, including — when access is transferred.

However, most organizations focus only on presenting reports about managing birthright accesses and revoked parts—they often neglect to mention how they have managed access transfers. Due to this, they fail to fully showcase that they have handled all the access management situations to keep the data secure. As a result, they struggle to adhere to compliance mandating IAM practices.

Reason 2: Organizations Are Unsure Of Which Access Control Policy To Enforce That Will Help Meet IAM Compliance

There are various access control security policies out there, such as role-based access control, attribute-based access control, the principle of least privilege, segregation of duties, just-in-time access, and a few more. Each has distinct rules and is applicable in different situations.

Due to these reasons, it becomes extremely challenging for organizations to decide which access policy approach best aligns with their IAM compliance obligations and security needs.

Reason 3: Organizations Get Confused Which Information To Present In IAM Compliance Audit Reports

There are various IAM compliances, each requiring distinct details to be mentioned in audit reports. Some compliances may ask for detailed reports regarding access control policy enforcement, some may ask about incident management details, and others may ask to present details about how organizations have managed access privileges.

Since there isn’t a unified or standard set of guidelines across IAM compliance standards, organizations often find it confusing to decide what’s necessary to report and how to organize the data to demonstrate full compliance. Due to this lack of clarity, organizations generate incomplete or inaccurate reports that fail to meet compliance standards.

Now, you may ask — ‘Is there any way to address these challenges?’ Fortunately, there is! You can get the help of an expert/consultant who can guide you through your compliance journey, or you can opt for compliance management software that will do the same. You can also automate the identity & access management tasks to achieve IAM compliance faster. To gain more clarity on how automation will help meet compliance faster, read on.

Achieve IAM Compliance Faster with Automation

Automation is a boon in today's complex digital landscape — which is filled with intricate workflows and interconnected tasks. It helps achieve results faster, minimizes errors to a greater extent, and gives precise and accurate results. Similarly, IAM compliance does the same. Automation tools like identity access management solutions and access review solutions help automate various critical tasks (different aspects of the compliance process) with a few clicks, allowing you to achieve compliance faster. But which tasks can actually be automated to help achieve compliance faster? Below, we've listed a few of them.

  • Automating Access Provisioning, Modification, & Deprovisioning

Identity access management platforms offer predefined workflows that automatically grant, modify and revoke access upon user provisioning, mid-lifecycle transition, and deprovisioning – when triggered (run). It also ensures that each user holds secure access to what's necessary through their tenure, nothing less and nothing more.

  • Automating Access Control Policy Enforcement

Identity access management software simplifies the enforcement of control policies by allowing IT teams to configure automation rules. These rules simply specify 'if' and 'then' conditions based on which the tool will automatically grant users access.

For example, IT teams can enforce roles-based access control by setting the condition 'if' new user's role matches to 'project manager' and 'then' grant them 'admin access' to 'Asana, Monday.com, and Zoom.' Once configured, the IAM tool will automatically grant new project managers access to the above-specified tools at the scheduled time without requiring manual involvement.

  • Automating Access Review Process

Access review automation tools conduct user access reviews on your behalf. Your team just needs to enter a few relevant details regarding which users and applications you want to review and what actions you want to take in case a misalignment in user access is found. Once configured, the tool handles the rest.

First, it automatically gathers all the information of specified users by integrating it with specified tools and conducting a thorough review. When it finds any discrepancies/misalignments in access, such as excessive privileges or unauthorized access, it runs auto-remediation actions (modifying access and revoking access). At last, it automatically generates a detailed report that you can examine to find out what actions the tool performed during the review.

However, these automation tools also help create and assign digital identities for your users, monitor user access activities (suspicious activity), detect potential threats, and more.

Overall, by automating all these tasks, you will quickly meet the stringent requirements set forth by compliance stands and achieve compliance in a fraction of the time.

Also Read: How To Automate Compliance Workflows?

However, instead of purchasing two separate tools (an IAM tool and an access review tool), you can consider investing in a platform like Zluri that offers the best of both worlds. This means you can use both identity & access management and access review functionalities together.

Here’s a brief overview of Zluri.

Zluri: A Solution To Simplify Identity Access Management & Achieve Compliance

Zluri offers two intelligent solutions: 'access management' and 'access review.' Each performs a distinct role in enhancing data security and achieving compliance.

Zluri's access management allows your IT team to create an onboarding, access modification, and offboarding workflow that automatically grants, modifies, and revokes access from the user when triggered.

Its main purpose is to ensure that only authorized users gain the right levels of access to authorized apps at the right time, which further helps maintain the security of crucial data and identities. By managing users' access throughout their tenure, Zluri's access management also helps meet IAM compliance demands.

That's not all. With Zluri's access management, your team can even set up access control policies without any hassle. This also allows you to meet specific policy enforcement requirements set forth by IAM compliance.

Apart from that, Zluri's access review conducts an in-depth audit of the user's access rights and auto-remediates when any misalignment in access permission is detected. Also, it generates a detailed report on what action it has taken during the review. Further, you can present these reports (which will act as evidence) to compliance auditors and show that you have taken all the necessary actions to maintain data integrity. This way, you can get your IAM regulatory compliance certification successfully.

Role Of IAM Beyond Meeting Identity Access Management Compliance

In conclusion, IAM is quite essential for meeting regulatory requirements set forth by IAM compliances; however, its role isn’t just restricted to catering compliance needs – there is more! IAM plays a pivotal role in meeting CIA Triad criteria — confidentiality, integrity, and availability. How? By strictly controlling which identities can access sensitive data and apps, IAM keeps critical data secure from getting compromised and maintains its confidentiality. Further, by preventing unauthorized modifications to critical data, IAM maintains the accuracy and integrity of data. Lastly, IAM meets availability criteria by ensuring that identities promptly get access to the resources (cloud-based applications and data) they need without unnecessary delays.

In short, IAM isn’t just about meeting compliance regulations; it’s also about monitoring every access point to keep data and SaaS apps protected, reliable, and accessible. 

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