Overview
Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) solutions provide comprehensive visibility into who has access to what across your entire application landscape, ensure appropriate access through automated certification campaigns, and orchestrate the complete user lifecycle from joiner to mover to leaver. According to Forrester, organizations using mature IGA reduce audit preparation time by 75% and access-related security incidents by 60%. Modern IGA platforms leverage AI/ML for role mining, access recommendations, and anomaly detection, transforming governance from a compliance checkbox into a strategic security capability.
Why It Matters
Auditors ask one question every year: 'Can you prove who has access to what?' Without IGA, this question takes weeks to answer. Organizations face an average of $4.2M in audit penalties and remediation costs annually due to access control failures. IGA automates access reviews (saving 500+ hours per campaign), enforces segregation of duties to prevent fraud, and provides continuous compliance evidence. With average enterprises managing 500+ applications and 50,000+ access entitlements, manual governance is impossible.
Key Concepts
1Access Certification (Attestation)
Periodic review campaigns where managers, application owners, or data stewards verify that access is still appropriate. Micro-certifications (event-driven) complement periodic reviews for continuous compliance.
2Segregation of Duties (SoD)
Preventive and detective controls that block toxic combinations of access enabling fraud. Example: same person can't create vendors and approve payments. SoD policies encoded in rules engines with real-time violation detection.
3Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
Grouping fine-grained permissions into business roles aligned with job functions. Role engineering uses top-down (business analysis) and bottom-up (role mining) approaches. Mature organizations manage 200-500 roles.
4User Provisioning (JML)
Joiner-Mover-Leaver lifecycle automation: account creation, access modifications on role changes, and complete deprovisioning on termination. Best-in-class organizations deprovision within 1 hour of termination.
5Access Request & Fulfillment
Self-service shopping cart for users to request access, with multi-level approval workflows, time-based access, and automatic provisioning via SCIM or connectors.
6Role Mining & Engineering
AI/ML-powered analysis of existing access patterns to discover and recommend roles. Reduces role engineering time by 80% and identifies over-privileged users.
7Birthright Access
Automatic access granted based on user attributes (department, location, job code) at hire without explicit request. Enables day-one productivity.
Key Capabilities
- Access certification campaigns with risk-based scheduling
- AI-powered access recommendations and anomaly detection
- Role-based access control (RBAC) modeling and mining
- Attribute-based access control (ABAC) policies
- Segregation of duties (SoD) enforcement and simulation
- User provisioning and deprovisioning via SCIM and connectors
- Access request portal with approval workflows
- Compliance reporting and analytics dashboards
- Orphan account detection and remediation
- Entitlement management and cleanup
Benefits
- 75% reduction in compliance audit preparation time
- 500+ hours saved per access certification campaign
- Day-one productivity with birthright provisioning
- 60% reduction in access-related security incidents
- Continuous compliance evidence for SOX, HIPAA, GDPR
- Elimination of orphan accounts (average enterprise has 30%)
- Reduced SoD violations and fraud risk
- Single pane of glass for enterprise access visibility
Common Challenges
Learning Path
Recommended learning sequence for IGA
Understand IGA Fundamentals
Learn about access governance, compliance requirements, and IGA architecture
Learn Identity Lifecycle
Understand joiner-mover-leaver processes and provisioning patterns
Master Access Modeling
Role engineering, RBAC design, attribute-based access control (ABAC)
Hands-On Platform Experience
Deploy and configure SailPoint, Saviynt, or One Identity
Earn IGA Certification
Validate skills with SailPoint or similar vendor certification
Technologies
Standards & Frameworks
Related Vendors
Related Certifications
Recommended Reading
Gartner Magic Quadrant
Identity Governance and Administration (2025)