Access Management System

Access management systems enable admins to manage and monitor user access permissions and rights to files, systems, and services, helping prevent data loss and security breaches.

System access management involves controlling user access, including tracking and changing authorizations. During normal business use, employees might access, change, or delete data. If this isn’t properly monitored, users can make mistakes or even take malicious actions. Access management seeks to limit the information users can view or change to minimize the chances of improper activity.

Limiting user access can be complicated, especially since severely limiting access compromises productivity and introduces confusion. For instance, individual users may be allowed to edit File X, but only view File Y. Or a certain role-based group of users may need read-only permissions for certain types of data and no access at all for other types of data. Every time a user or file is added to the system, someone must manually or automatically apply the proper access limitations.

Enterprise access management solutions are designed to automate, visualize, and streamline the process of assigning and managing access settings. However, to manage user access consistently across your IT infrastructure, you’ll need an access control system capable of integrating with other systems. This includes:

• Active Directory - a directory service that helps authenticate and authorize end users on Windows^® networks and helps ensure security policies are followed across the network.
• OneDrive - a Microsoft-hosted cloud storage service that hosts business files and facilitates file syncing and sharing across users.  
• SharePoint^® - a web platform that functions primarily as a system for collaborative business document management and storage.
  

By adopting a security access management system integrated with your company’s file systems or access control environments, you’ll be better prepared to ensure users receive the correct security credentials.

Even with access management tools, admins often need a mechanism to verify user settings and check user activity hasn’t caused a data breach. Often, admins must provide auditors with reports to show their data security policies comply with industry regulations. Luckily, access control systems perform automated reporting and allow you to track user activity.

As companies grow, managing employee roles and end-user activity becomes increasingly difficult. Automated software helps ensure users have the correct permissions levels and only have access to the resources they need, bolstering organization data security. On the other hand, substandard user access control presents many serious risks. In fact, cybersecurity breaches precipitated by insider threats cost an average of $8.7 million.

Poor system access control management can wreak havoc. Not only can users with excess privileges accidentally delete or share private enterprise data, but employees with malicious intent could corrupt, steal, or expose information to undermine the organization. What’s more, hackers often attempt to access user profiles with the hopes of gaining privileged access to the sensitive data. As such, it’s important to avoid granting users access privileges, enforce the rule of least privileges, and only provide minimal access necessary for users to fulfill their roles.

To ensure more accurate and secure user provisioning, you can use access management software. These tools help ensure business security by offering the following features and capabilities:

• Automation: By automating tasks like creating, modifying, deleting, or disabling accounts, user access management systems help you scale and take faster, more accurate action. For instance, role-specific templates make user provisioning fast while ensuring adherence to security policies. Automatic audit reports can quickly provide insights into security issues and allow you to automatically schedule and send reports to your auditor.
• Integration: Tools should integrate with common business systems like Active Directory and SharePoint. Performing user provisioning and de-provisioning, reviewing current user access settings, and running audit reports on user activity takes time. Admins need a straightforward, centralized way to manage, visualize, and change user information for all these tools.
• Security: Whether you’re dealing with innocent mistakes or malicious activity, you need to respond as quickly as possible to help protect data and resume operations. That’s where automated tools that allow you to instantly view breaches or drill down into user activity come in.
• Reporting: Automated tools help you generate customized reports showing who has access to what and when they accessed it, enabling you to meet auditors’ user management policies and expectations.

Effective access management solutions must:

• Make user provisioning easier. Admins must perform fast, accurate account provisioning, which means being able to create, modify, activate, and deactivate user access to services and files. Standardized role-specific templates can be useful when setting up new user accounts, while built-in tools like web-based, self-service permissions portals can help you put data access rights directly in data owners’ hands.
• Provide insight into potential insider threats. Effective access management involves identifying and tracking high-risk accounts and activity to prevent insider attacks. Tools should enhance security by allowing you to monitor, analyze, and audit Active Directory and Group Policy to see what changes have been made, by whom, and when those changes occurred.
• Integrate with Active Directory, Group Policy, SharePoint, and more. Comprehensive access control solutions should integrate with widely used authorization-related business systems like Active Directory, Group Policy, SharePoint, Exchange, and NTFS. You should be able to see group memberships and access rights settings from these tools all in one place, so you can quickly identify who has access to what. Plus, visibility into privileged accounts provides additional internal threat protection.
• Visualization features. It’s useful when access rights software provides at-a-glance visibility across your domain through maps or tree structures. Visualizing file server, SharePoint, and other permissions can help you quickly see who has access to which resources, offering a more intuitive approach than lists of permissions relationships.
• Support regulatory compliance. User access records are a critical component of many data security regulations, including HIPAA, GDPR, and PCI DSS. Admins need to be able to track and show changes to everything from server files to mailboxes to calendars. An auditing tool can quickly generate in-depth compliance reports showing user access rights and activity in a few clicks.
  

Looking for a complete and secure access management solution? SolarWinds Access Rights Manager provides a comprehensive approach to managing security access and was designed to meet all the above requirements.

It’s easy to confuse identity management and access management, but these are two distinct processes within organizations, and require different tools and methods.

Identity management, or ID management, is how a business chooses to positively identify the employees or end users who need access to IT resources and services. The focus here is on authentication, which means confirming user identity. Is a certain user who they say they are? Authentication can be performed through passwords, single-use PINs, biometrics, multi-factor login requirements, or other similar means.

Access management, on the other hand, is about authorization. Individuals or groups are meant to only have access to certain parts of the network, applications, or system. For instance, should a specific user have permission to download a certain file? End users across the business must be authorized, or given permissions, to access and use resources. While authentication comes before authorization, the step of authorizing users is also critical for ensuring security. For instance, end users should be given only the minimum permissions they need to perform their jobs. Most tools on the market are specialized to help with either identity management or access management.

When it comes to choosing an access authorization software, you should look for features offering admins ease-of-use and automation while helping reduce the risk of insider threat. As you look for the right access management solution, ask if tools offer you the ability to:

• Manage user permissions across Active Directory, SharePoint, OneDrive, Exchange, and more?
• Drill down into the details of user activity?
• Quickly and accurately provision or de-provision users?
• Easily enforce company security policies?
• Visualize current user permissions relationships?
• Set a data loss prevention strategy?
• Delegate certain permissions responsibilities to data owners?
• Run automatic reports for auditing?
• Implement role-based access controls?
• Demonstrate compliance for GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and other regulatory guidelines?

Is your user access management system a sufficient solution? A single mistake when it comes to access rights can expose your organization to costly threats. Visibility is key for ensuring security and compliance. Admins need to be aware of current user access configurations, user activity, and unauthorized changes to sensitive files. For growing organizations, managing all this information manually can quickly become overwhelming. Without automated, integrated user access management tools, it’s far too easy to lose sight of permissions settings. Ultimately, to effectively manage user access across an organization, you need the right software solution.

SolarWinds Access Rights Manager is built to provide the insights organizations need to perform comprehensive access management, allowing users to focus on monitoring and controlling permissions to specific resources with the ability to easily audit user access, changes, and quickly generate reports to demonstrate compliance.

Top-notch security: ARM is designed to help minimize the risk and impact of insider threats by tracking changes in Active Directory^® and Group Policy. You can also monitor privileged (and therefore high-risk) accounts. That way, you’re ready to act if problematic access occurs.

Streamlined compliance and auditing: Improve compliance by detecting changes across folders, mailboxes, and calendars. Quickly view current permissions or generate audit-ready reports showing user rights.

Fast, accurate provisioning: Set up new user accounts in seconds by leveraging role-specific templates. You can also offer data owners a self-service portal to put control directly in their hands.

For enterprise-grade access management, learn more about what Access Rights Manager can do for your organization by downloading a free trial for 30 days.