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User access reviews are a critical piece of an information security program. It's not uncommon to find users who have overly-permissive permissions, old contractors, or employees who have moved roles in the organization, for example. One of the biggest challenges with performing these reviews, is knowing whether the user has a business need to access the data. This is why it is critical to involve the business leaders in access reviews and effectively training them on need-to-know. Access reviews can also illuminate root-cause issues in your IAM processes. One example of this, is finding old contractors/consultants - suggesting user account decommissioning processes need to be adjusted.

User access reviews offer key benefits: enhancing security by ensuring only authorized access to sensitive data, thereby reducing breach risks; improving compliance and governance by aligning with regulations and policies; and increasing efficiency and productivity by streamlining access rights to necessary resources. Conducting these reviews involves evaluating user roles and permissions. Utilizing tools like identity and access management systems helps automate this process. It's important to adapt the review process to changing business needs and technological advancements for ongoing effectiveness.

Key points: 1. Define policy for User Access Reviews (UAR) frequency and designate reviewers based on risk levels. 2. Establish standards for: - Risk levels of access definitions. - Impact of risk levels on provisioning and UAR processes. 3. Risk-rate access definitions to ensure UAR campaigns review and route them per standards. 4. UAR campaigns should follow the run book timeline. 5. Capture and reconcile data metrics before and after campaigns to ensure all necessary access and personnel are reviewed. 6. Record and trace approve/remove actions for audits. 7. Define procedures for handling no-response scenarios to minimize business risk.

User access reviews are often time consuming, administratively burdensome and not performed timely. Consider leveraging IAM systems, such as @iamcompare, so that (1) user access reviews can be performed at any time, (2) access populations are automatically generated & standardized, (3) terminated users are addressed real-time and therefore not in access populations and (4) non-human and non-employee accounts are properly owned/sponsored. Typical external audit requirements include all of these points.

Your organization should strive to make the access review process as simple as possible. A solution like SafePaaS can prevent the risk of application access control failure by completely automating the enterprise certification process for all identities (human and non-human) across the application and all other data sources, including IDM, IGA, ITSM, Database, and Servers. Look for intuitive capability allowing all systems to be consolidated into a single platform. Closed-loop access - from provisioning access all the way through the access process to remediation. Roles constantly change so some way of centralizing control is needed.

Access review is a critical process for organizations concerned with accountability, risk management, and regulatory compliance. Automating the access review process increases access accuracy and effectiveness while formalizing the process for audit purposes. Access review provides the organization visibility into its users’ identities and access rights to critical business information and services. It establishes compliance controls for ensuring that access is correct at the certification time. The user access review process enables organizations to answer critical questions such as: Who has access to what? Who approved those access privileges? When was access granted? Is their access still valid and in line with policy?

Absolutely critical for any organisation if they are under the remit of US SOX regs. ITGC underpins the effectiveness of financial controls. Failures in ITGC create a domino effect in financial control failures too.

Regular reviews of user and system access bring many benefits. When we first start auditing a system, start small with the highest risks. While there are many things to consider, I think the most critical questions are: 1. Is there any dangling (or not correctly revoked) access? 2. Are all the permissions as tight as they can be? 3. Runbook to quickly and completely revoke? While the first might seem obvious, you would be amazed. With the sprawl of SaaS providers and all the internally managed systems, it's no wonder we tend to miss things. This is especially true regarding ensuring that our systems are integrated with our identity provider and support an entire lifecycle. Many support provisioning but still need to be de-provisioning.