Traditional compliance approaches rely on periodic access reviews and static snapshots, but modern regulatory demands require real-time visibility into access decisions and the business context that drives them.
Organizations face an ever-growing array of compliance mandates in today’s dynamic regulatory landscape.. From industry-specific regulations like HIPAA to broader frameworks such as NIST 800-53 and ISO 27001, proving adherence to these standards can feel like a perpetual uphill battle. What if your identity and access management (IAM) compliance wasn’t a massive burden requiring hundreds of hours preparing documents and data reviews, but rather an easily provable demonstration of continuous identity practices?
Many traditional compliance approaches rely heavily on periodic snapshots of access permissions. Auditors typically require periodic access reviews and will sample a few users to evaluate for adherence, but the static nature of periodic reviews leaves a significant gap between documentation and real-time operational reality. How long until auditors close this gap during their audits and focus more on what’s actually happening right now? SGNL bridges this gap by providing definitive, context-rich evidence for every access decision. Instead of simply showing who had access to what at a specific point in time, auditors can see the precise business justification—like an active ServiceNow ticket or on-call status – that granted a user access at a specific moment. This dramatically streamlines audits and delivers a much higher level of assurance, satisfying controls like ISO 27001 9.4.1 (Information Access Restriction) by meeting and exceeding adherence to applicable controls.
Compliance audits are mostly human processes that determine how well an organization defines, reviews, and carries out its security practices. Since they are human process, governance must be understandable by the business. However, most organizations are managing thousands of roles, entitlements, groups, and policies which can quickly become overwhelming, making it difficult for employees to understand and participate in the audit process. How can someone approve or attest to someone’s level of access if the underlying technical controls are so complex, they are not understandable?
SGNL simplifies audits by enabling organizations to codify their access governance policies into a centralized, human-readable, and executable format. These intuitive policies, comprised of small, re-usable “snippets,” replace the complexity of traditional role explosion, ensuring that your organization’s rules for access control are easily understood and auditable. This directly supports robust information governance programs, addressing controls like PCI-DSS 12.4 (Information security policies) by establishing, documenting, and maintaining clear access policies.
Modern enterprises are constantly evolving, and so are their risks. Static access permissions and periodic reviews simply can’t keep pace. SGNL brings agility to your compliance posture by integrating real-time context into every access decision. Our platform helps enforce Zero Standing Privilege (ZSP), eliminating permanent access and drastically reducing the blast radius attackers can exploit. This proactive approach is fundamental to a robust Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) program, aligning with controls like the Cloud Security Alliance’s Cloud Controls Matrix GRC-02 (Risk Management Program) by directly mitigating significant security risks.
Furthermore, SGNL facilitates more effective and efficient policy reviews. Stakeholders and auditors can review clear, understandable policies that grant access, rather than deciphering countless individual permissions. Our Policy Lens feature even allows for simulating policy changes to understand their impact before deployment. This facilitates the policy exception process (CCMv4 GRC-04), ensuring that changes or deviations from established policies are managed through an approved and auditable process.
SGNL’s continuous identity management capabilities ensure that access is not persistent based on a role or set of credentials. Instead, access is granted dynamically and just-in-time based on real-time business context, and automatically revoked when the business context or security posture changes. This approach to managing identity and access policies, reflected in NIST 800-53 IAM-16 (Authorization mechanisms) and IAM-06 (Source code access restriction), ensures that users receive only the specific permissions needed for a justified task, for the exact duration it is required, exceeding the base requirements of the control, including ”…following the rule of least privilege based on job function.”
Meeting compliance mandates shouldn’t be a reactive scramble. With SGNL, compliance becomes a continuous, integrated aspect of your security operations. By providing definitive audit evidence, simplifying policy management, and enabling dynamic, real-time access controls, SGNL helps your organization simplify identity controls and make audits less burdensome, while also exceeding the requirements of most audit frameworks.
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