Amid the constant changes that organizations endure — whether through personnel decisions, new vendor selection, tech stack updates, or department restructuring — they must ensure sensitive company resources and applications remain secure and are only accessible by authorized users.

Managing employee and third-party access privileges to enterprise applications, data, and networks is no easy feat, though it’s crucial to overall security, compliance, and operational efficiency.

Fortunately, automated user access reviews with identity and access management (IAM) systems allow organizations to verify proper user privileges and prevent unauthorized access.

User access reviews (UARs), also referred to as access certifications or certification campaigns, are routine processes that ensure employees have the correct permissions based on their roles and responsibilities.

These reviews enable organizations to regularly certify user access to enterprise systems and applications for compliance and safety purposes. In this way, UARs help teams align with the principle of least privilege, meaning only necessary access is granted to users.

With the help of advanced user access review tools, organizations can design automated certification campaigns by role, entitlement, app, and more to identify and resolve outdated or inappropriate permissions throughout enterprise IT systems.

Purpose of User Access Reviews

Access reviews verify that users have the appropriate permissions, which works to prevent unauthorized access, align with internal policies and standards, and ensure compliance with industry regulations.

They help keep user permissions up-to-date as the organization undergoes personnel changes or implements new applications. For instance, when an employee resigns, they should no longer have access to company resources. A certification campaign would identify and revoke inappropriate access, supporting enterprise security and compliance with industry standards.

To reiterate, access reviews ensure users only have access to necessary resources to perform their jobs, minimizing potential security risks. Here is a closer look at why UARs are so critical to enterprise IT security:

Security and Compliance

In a landscape where cybersecurity incidents and data breaches are constantly on the rise, access certifications are an essential practice for keeping enterprise systems, networks, and applications secure and compliant with industry regulations.

There are several key pieces of legislation and industry standards that encourage user access reviews, including:

• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
• Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX)
• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
• Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS)

Aside from strengthening their security posture, organizations must engage in regular access reviews to meet regulatory requirements. According to global advisory firm KPMG, “The need to control who has access to what systems and data is more than just a matter of enterprise security — it’s a compliance necessity as well.”

Protecting Against Insider Threats

A 2023 report surveying over 326 cybersecurity professionals revealed that 74% of organizations have seen insider threats become more frequent. To combat this rising threat, enterprises can use certification campaigns to revoke access that’s no longer needed. 

Regular UARs mitigate the risk of insider threats that stem from privilege creep, abuse, and misuse. As employees change roles within an organization, they may gain new permissions while retaining access to systems required in their previous roles.

Whether intentionally or accidentally, this inappropriate or outsized access widens an organization’s attack surface, making it more vulnerable to data breaches and unauthorized access. Thus, UARs help to limit the number of users with access to enterprise systems, thereby reducing the risk of insider threats.

The exact design and implementation of certification campaigns will vary between organizations depending on their internal policies, the regulations they must adhere to, and other parameters. However, here are some of the necessary components and considerations for successful UARs that tend to apply across the board:

Access Review Types

Organizations can execute certification campaigns on different criteria based on their unique security, compliance, and operational needs. Here are some of the common types of reviews they can utilize:

• User-Based Reviews: Focuses on individual users and all the resources they can access.
• Application-Based Reviews: Concerned with a specific application, verifying which users can access it.
• Role-Based Reviews: Ensures that roles within an organization align with access permissions and business needs.
• Event-Driven Reviews: Triggered by significant events like mergers, acquisitions, or security incidents to reassess access levels.

Necessary Certification Campaign Details

When designing a certification campaign, there are a few essential details that IT leaders must be able to specify, including:

• Duration of the Campaign: The start and end date of the access review
• Campaign Objective: The purpose of the campaign
• App or Resource: The application, system, or other resources included in the review
• User Name: The specific users/teams that are included in the campaign
• Reviewer: The individual assigned to review each user’s/application’s access

Actions that A Review Can Make

When setting up a campaign, it’s also important to consider the desired action or outcome. These are some of the main actions that can result from an access review, whether done manually or with an automated tool:

• Certify Access: If the user has the right permissions for their role/responsibility, the review can verify they have the proper access.
• Revoke Access: If the user has unnecessary or outdated privileges, the reviewer can decide to revoke their access, notifying them about the decision according to internal protocols.
• Flag for Escalated Review: If the reviewer comes across a user/application/situation outside of the campaign parameters, they may need to flag it for further review to prevent potential security risks.

Again, regularly certifying or revoking user access is essential for making sure users have the appropriate permissions, and proactively preventing unauthorized access to sensitive or confidential business resources.

Despite the clear importance of user access reviews for enterprise security and compliance, organizations may struggle to implement access certification processes in an accurate and efficient manner. However, being able to proactively identify common roadblocks — like the following — can help enterprise IT departments with successful implementation and management.

Lack of Automation

Manually tracking and reviewing access for users across multiple systems can be daunting. This only becomes more challenging as the organization grows, hires more employees, and adopts new systems or applications.

With so much data to pore over manually, organizations make themselves prone to human error, meaning users with inappropriate access privileges may continue to go undetected.

Overlooked Access Rights

In a similar vein, unintentional oversight can lead to “access creep,” where users retain unnecessary permissions as they advance within the organization. This can be expensive for organizations, as they pay for software seats and licenses that are no longer needed. Plus, it can open them up to further vulnerability with an attack surface that’s larger than it should be.

Time-Consuming Reviews

As mentioned above, traditional manual review processes can be very tedious and time-consuming. These certification campaigns are highly important for enterprise security. However, completing them is a resource-intensive task that can take away from the IT staff’s ability to focus on more strategic work.

It’s critical for teams to complete these reviews on a timely basis to quickly mitigate potential vulnerabilities and threats as soon as possible. So, when teams face bottlenecks in the process, and reviews become delayed, it can compromise the organization’s security posture.

Executing comprehensive access reviews requires organizations to use the proper tools and a strategic approach. The following are some of the best practices organizations can adopt to engage in a thorough access review process:

Implement Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

Defining roles with corresponding permissions simplifies user access management and reviews. This is referred to as role-based access control (RBAC), assuming that everyone in the same role within the organization is entitled to the same access privileges.

System administrators can define roles with a set of permissions that are necessary for each job. Then, any new personnel can be quickly assigned to the proper role without needing to parse through and set privileges for each app or system individually.

Automating Access Reviews

Enterprises can handle large-scale user reviews much more efficiently with the help of automated tools. Nathan Shepler of Schneider Downs Risk Advisory states, “... if your organization has the resources, there are tools and software to promote efficiency in the review process.”

Adopting an automated review tool eases the burden on IT teams, no longer requiring them to manually certify user access. As we’ll discuss in further detail below, this frees up their time for more value-add work and mitigates the risk of human error, supporting enhanced security throughout the enterprise.

Involve Key Stakeholders

It’s also best practice to keep business leaders and department heads involved in the access review process, not just IT personnel. This includes HR, legal, and operations.

Cross-functional reviews ensure permissions align with business needs, support compliance, and adhere to the principle of least privilege to uphold system security.

Regularly Audit Access Logs

Teams should regularly review audit logs to monitor user activity and verify access. Periodic reviews of logs support a comprehensive security approach, ensuring access certifications align with actual user activities.

In other words, this practice adds another layer of security, helping teams ensure that UARs are working as intended and users are only accessing the systems and applications necessary for their jobs.

Create Pre-Built Review Templates

For teams that still handle certification campaigns manually, standardizing reviews with pre-built templates helps to make the process more streamlined and thorough.

These templates clearly outline the protocols to ensure reviews are completed consistently, regardless of the staff member responsible for it. Such templates can be customized for specific user roles, systems, or compliance needs, catering to the organization’s unique operational and security needs.

Among other best practices, automating UARs offers distinct advantages for organizations, such as:

Increased Efficiency

One of the biggest benefits is the potential for efficiency improvements. Automating access reviews saves teams significant time and reduces manual effort, allowing for faster review completion.

With the help of automation, reviewers have more time to focus on core competencies without compromising security. Plus, it prevents scenarios where reviews are delayed or skipped entirely for efficiency's sake, which could make the enterprise more vulnerable to attack.

Improved Accuracy

Automated systems also help to reduce human error in the review process, ensuring access policies are applied consistently across the organization.

Whether through honest mistakes or intentional malfeasance, manual certifications can be fraught with error, such as accidentally overlooking a user with outsized access privileges. Instead, automated systems have much greater accuracy, reducing the organization’s risk exposure to breaches and insider threats.

Better Compliance

Automated systems provide detailed audit trails and documentation, ensuring compliance with relevant industry standards and data security regulations – like SOX, GDPR, HIPAA, and others. These logs offer traceable records of all activities pertaining to role assignments and policy enforcement, enabling easier and more straightforward audits.

Going one step further, leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) in automated access reviews offers deeper analysis into user behaviors across enterprise systems, automatically detecting anomalies or over-provisioning.

Additionally, AI can strengthen risk-based approvals for efficiency and security gains. These systems help prioritize high-risk access reviews while accelerating low-risk approvals, ensuring the appropriate level of scrutiny for the level of data sensitivity or systems involved.

User access reviews are an essential part of an enterprise’s security and compliance framework. While manual reviews are still possible, automating the process with advanced IAM tools like Ping Identity helps to improve the efficiency and accuracy of certification campaigns, ensuring a scalable system as the organization grows.

Learn more about Access Review within Ping Identity Governance and how it can help improve security and risk management while supporting business agility.