Although compliance and meeting government audits are requirements for almost all organizations in the U.S., and we know that compliance can have a direct, positive impact on the long-term health of an organization in many areas. Depending on which industry the organization is in, there are different governmental rules and regulations that need to be followed. Often, meeting these audit requirements is cumbersome and requires a great deal of time and effort. There are ways, though, to make the audit process much easier, while also benefiting the long-term growth and health of your organization.
How IAM Helps Audits and Compliance
Identity and access management (IAM) solutions can actually help organizations to easily meet government audit requirements, all the while benefiting the organizations in other ways. One of the main requirements of audits is showing, often, that secure data such as financial statements and customer information is kept safe. IAM solutions can help the organization daily in ensuring correct access, so that when audit time comes around, the organization has everything it needs, all in one place, to provide the information needed.
Through the day-to-day activity of employees joining or leaving the organization, it is easy to lose track of who has access to what. An automated account management solution with role-based access control (RBAC) allows a manager to oversee and document exactly who has access to what, plus any changes they are making. This allows access rights and changes in secure applications to be continually documented for audits in a neat, organized manner. For example, managers can generate an overview of each user activity. The system automatically logs which employee performs a particular management activity, as well as the time it occurred. This is extremely useful for audits.
Long-Term Health
IAM solutions allow an organization to easily meet audit reporting requirements, but how can it benefit the company? Often if an organization is going to implement a solution, it needs to show the ROI the solution provides. IAM solutions don’t just help with audit needs; in fact, that is just one of the many benefits that they provide. IAM solutions can actually help in many areas of the organization and promote long-term health of the company and their network.
- Network Security — One of the main, most obvious benefits of implementing an IAM solution is ensuring security of the network. By meeting compliance and audit needs with an IAM solution, the organization is putting additional methods in place to keep their network safe. Automated account management solutions allow any change to a user account to be made easily and quickly, with the changes synced to all connected systems. So when an employee is no longer with the organization, their account can be disabled quickly, and the organization can ensure that no disgruntled former employees can do damage to the network.
- No Pollution — Another benefit is the removal of pollution in the network. The organization can see clearly how many accounts it manages that are without the pollution of inactive accounts or people who are no longer with the organization. This ensures that the network is clean and that there are only active accounts.An overview of the network that can be generated from an IAM solution allows management to see how many people are using each application for licensing reasons. This allows them to easily make decisions on systems and applications that should be renewed based on usage, quickly run queries and have an overall clear understanding of people in the network.
- Ensuring Employees are Productive — IAM solutions can also help ensure that your employees are the most productive they can be. Access rights are very important in the corporate world to ensure that employees can complete a job or project they are working on. With an IAM solution in place, employees can be granted access rights quickly, but securely, to the resources that they need. This ensures that they can be up and running on their first day of employment, as well throughout their employment when they need additional access rights.
Overall, audits can be a huge headache for organizations and their leaders, but IAM solutions can reduce the audit scramble while also providing many additional benefits to your organization to promote the company’s long-term growth and health.
Dean Wiech is Managing Director of 
