User provisioning and deprovisioning: Why it matters for IAM

Overprivileged and orphaned user identities pose risks. Cybersecurity teams should be sure user profiles grant only appropriate access -- and only for as long as necessary.

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• Dave Shackleford, Voodoo Security

While a longstanding practice in IT, IAM provisioning and deprovisioning practices have expanded in recent years to accommodate cloud environments, zero-trust access principles, federated identities and much more. Vigilant organizations are careful to give employees appropriate access to systems based on their roles and then remove that access promptly when no longer required.

Secure provisioning and deprovisioning actions are critical -- and complicated. When done carefully, provisioning and deprovisioning enables an organization to control access to systems, applications and data.

What's required is rigorous technology implementation, process design and regular reviews of the provisioning and deprovisioning lifecycle.