Achieving Streamlined Identity Management and Future-Ready IGA Through a Strategic IAM Implementation

A large, research-focused North-American university sought to centralize and automate its user identity management processes. The institution needed a robust, scalable Identity and Access Management (IAM) and Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) solution to address inefficiencies caused by a reliance on multiple disparate identity sources. The project focused on consolidating identity management, improving user experience, and laying the groundwork for future growth.

Highlights

Challenge

The university faced significant challenges due to its decentralized approach to identity management. Our clients relied on multiple sources to provision user identities, leading to inconsistencies and operational inefficiencies. Specifically, the university faced the following challenges:

• Disparate Identity Sources: The lack of a unified identity management system created inefficiencies in user provisioning and de-provisioning, increasing the risk of security vulnerabilities.
• Limited In-house Expertise: Our client lacked the internal resources and specialized knowledge to effectively implement and manage a complex IGA solution.
• Underutilized IGA Platform: The existing IGA platform was underutilized, hindering the university's ability to achieve its governance and compliance objectives.

Solution

We partnered with the university to design and implement a comprehensive IAM and IGA solution, leveraging best practices tailored to the university's specific needs. The approach included:

• Solution Design and Implementation: Designing and implementing a tailored IAM solution focusing on automation, ease of use, strong governance, and enhanced security.
• Centralized Identity Management: Configuring their IAM system to act as a central identity repository. This repository aggregates user data from various sources and provisioned access to multiple endpoints, streamlining the entire identity lifecycle.
• Data Integration and Automation: Implementing key integrations with the university's student information system, Active Directory, Google Apps, and Exchange Server to enable secure data transfer and automated workflows, eliminating manual processes.
• Enhanced User Experience: Improving the user experience through custom UI branding, tailored email notifications, and optimized workflows. 
• Knowledge Transfer and Sustainability: Providing comprehensive training and best practice documentation to the university's on-campus support staff to ensure the university could independently support and extend the solution after the initial implementation.
• Future-Ready Foundation: Extensibility was a key design principle. We implemented a solution built to adapt to future challenges and evolving requirements, providing a long-term foundation for the University's IAM and IGA needs.

Outcomes

• Streamlined Identity Management: Automating identity resolution ensures efficient and accurate management of student and employee identities across the university.
• Empowered Users and Administrators: With the implementation of administrator and self-service capabilities, users now have greater control over their profiles and access, streamlining administrative tasks.
• Improved Performance: Batch processing within the IAM system was optimized, enhancing performance and overall system efficiency.

This successful engagement addressed our client's identity security challenges with a centralized, automated, and user-friendly SailPoint solution that offers improved efficiency, enhanced security, and a solid foundation for future growth in its identity management capabilities.