Rethinking IGA: a smarter, automated approach to access governance

As enterprises grow increasingly complex, Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) becomes a critical component of managing access to systems and data. The process of handling access requests, reviews, and certifications has traditionally been manual, time-consuming, and prone to error. SGNL offers a way to simplify and automate parts of IGA, leveraging its policy backplane and integration with real-time data sources to streamline access decisions.

Automating access requests with SGNL

Access requests are a common pain point in IGA. Employees and contractors need timely access to resources, but manual approval processes often slow down productivity while increasing the risk of mismanagement or unauthorized access. SGNL addresses these challenges by introducing automation into access request workflows, ensuring decisions are consistent, efficient, and aligned with business policies.

Policy-based decision making

SGNL’s platform can leverage automation hooks in popular IGA platforms to evaluate access requests against pre-defined policies, reducing the need for human intervention. For example, if an employee requests access to a file-sharing platform, SGNL can consult its policy backplane to check:

• The employee’s role and department
• Their current entitlements
• Security status of their device
• Their current case assignments in ITSM systems
• HR data to check whether they are on leave
• Other relevant regulatory or business requirements such as citizenship, security clearance, etc.

Based on this data, SGNL can either approve or reject the request automatically, ensuring that decisions are consistent and aligned with organizational policies.

Integration with data sources

SGNL connects to a wide array of identity and security systems to continuously ingest and cache relevant and up-to-date information needed for access decisions. This might include directories like Active Directory or Azure AD, endpoint management tools, XDR, and HR systems. By aggregating this data in real-time, SGNL ensures that decisions are based on the most current information available.

Reduced administrative burden

Automating routine access requests significantly reduces the workload for IT and security teams. Instead of spending hours manually reviewing each request, teams can focus on handling exceptions or more complex cases that require human oversight.

Automating and augmenting access reviews with SGNL

Access reviews are a cornerstone of effective Identity Governance and Administration (IGA), ensuring that users’ entitlements align with their roles and organizational policies. While SGNL is fully capable of automating access reviews, some organizations still prefer manual oversight for high-stakes scenarios. SGNL strikes the perfect balance by offering both automated and augmented review processes.

Automating access reviews with policy-driven decisions

SGNL integrates with existing popular IGA solutions and uses policy-driven automation to streamline access reviews. This process evaluates whether users still meet the criteria for their entitlements:

• If the criteria are satisfied, SGNL returns an “allow,” and the access remains.
• If the criteria are no longer met, SGNL returns a “deny,” and the access is automatically revoked.

This capability eliminates manual intervention for many scenarios, providing a reliable, scalable, and consistent approach to managing access reviews. For predictable systems or roles, this automation significantly reduces administrative overhead while maintaining security and compliance.

Augmenting reviews for manual oversight

Despite the ability to fully automate access reviews, many organizations opt for manual recertification processes or reviews of the current state. SGNL complements this preference by providing critical tools and insights to enhance manual workflows:

• Real-Time Insights for Decision Support: SGNL aggregates data such as last access timestamps, device compliance, and role assignment enabling reviewers to quickly evaluate whether a user is compliant with policy, using tools like Policy Lens.
• Centralized and Aggregated Logging: SGNL provides historic logging and auditing data against its set of centralized policies, enabling auditors to look back on how decisions have changed over time as organizations trend towards zero standing privilege (ZSP)
• Reducing Review Scope Through Automation: SGNL can automate reviews for predictable entitlements, allowing manual efforts to focus on high-stakes scenarios.

Flexibility to match organizational needs

SGNL’s approach offers organizations the flexibility to:

• Fully automate access reviews where appropriate.
• Retain manual oversight for critical or sensitive entitlements.
• Implement a hybrid model, automating the more predictable reviews while augmenting manual processes with real-time insights.

The Value of automation and augmentation

By automating and augmenting access reviews, SGNL delivers:

• Consistency: Decisions are based on predefined rules and real-time data, reducing variability and human error.
• Efficiency: Automation frees up time for IT and security teams to focus on strategic initiatives.
• Compliance: Detailed audit trails ensure that reviews meet regulatory and organizational standards.

The path forward

As enterprises continue to adopt modern IAM strategies, automating and augmenting your existing IGA deployments and processes will be a critical step toward achieving greater efficiency and security. While automating access requests is a clear win, access reviews may require a hybrid approach, blending automation with human oversight.

SGNL’s ability to consult policies, integrate with data sources, and make real-time decisions positions it as a powerful tool for streamlining IGA workflows. By adopting SGNL, organizations can reduce administrative overhead, improve compliance, and ensure that access management keeps pace with their business needs.