Beyond IGA: How Pathlock Uncovers Permission-Level Risks to Build Compliant Roles 

The range of specialized ERP applications available today are making business processes efficient and simpler. While the user benefits from all the features at their disposal, security and compliance teams struggle to manage access across multiple applications while ensuring that users only receive the access they need. Traditional Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) tools have played an important role by allowing enterprises to simplify the user access provisioning process. However, despite their advantages, traditional IGA tools come with inherent limitations that can expose organizations to risks at different levels. Pathlock Role Management, with its advanced capabilities, offers a way to go beyond these limitations and build compliant roles that prevent new risk from being introduced into your application landscape.

The Challenges of Traditional IGA

One of the core benefits of traditional IGA is the ability to create enterprise or business roles. These roles bundle together a set of entitlements and permissions that are often assigned based on job functions. For example, an “accounting clerk” role might give access to financial systems and tools that someone in that role would need to perform their job. This streamlines the user access request process, as users don’t have to request access to every individual application separately.

However, the fundamental challenge with traditional IGA tools is their inability to analyze risks at a fine-grained level. When roles are created, they are built at a high level, and traditional IGA can only assess risk in a “coarse-grained” manner. This means that when a user requests access via an enterprise role, the potential risks embedded within specific permissions or entitlements may not be visible. As a result, organizations may unknowingly provision access that contains security vulnerabilities.

Without the ability to check risk at the permission level, organizations using traditional IGA are left with blind spots. They face an increased likelihood of both false positives and false negatives. On one hand, they may overestimate risks by flagging role combinations that don’t actually pose a threat. On the other hand, they may fail to recognize real risks because the analysis didn’t go deep enough to expose vulnerabilities hidden within permissions.

Pathlock Role Management: Going Beyond Traditional IGA

Pathlock Role Management addresses these limitations by offering fine-grained Access Risk Analysis that integrates seamlessly with its role management functionality. Pathlock takes role management to the next level by allowing organizations to do:

1. Fine-Grained Risk Assessment: Unlike traditional IGA, which only assesses risk at a high level, Pathlock drills down to the permission level. This ensures that organizations have visibility into the true risks associated with their enterprise roles. Whether creating new role packages or modifying existing ones, Pathlock identifies potential risks by analyzing permissions across multiple applications.

2. Risk Mitigation with Controls: Pathlock also goes beyond risk identification by providing built-in capabilities to manage risks effectively. With the ability to add mitigating controls, organizations can proactively address risks before they propagate. This is crucial not only for security but also for compliance, as audit requirements often necessitate the management of risks that cannot be completely eliminated.

3. Conflict Resolver for Remediation: One of Pathlock’s standout features is Conflict Resolver, which helps organizations resolve access risks. When a risk is identified during a risk analysis, Conflict Resolver evaluates the permissions associated with the role and provides recommendations on how to remediate or mitigate the identified risks. This level of support is something traditional IGA tools simply don’t offer. At best, traditional tools can run risk simulations that return coarse-grained results, but they don’t help organizations address those risks.

4. Real-Time Risk Simulation: Pathlock’s ability to simulate risks in real time while building or modifying role packages is another key differentiator. When creating a new access package, Pathlock’s risk simulation instantly flags any conflicting permissions, giving organizations the chance to address risks before roles are provisioned to users. This ensures that organizations are not only identifying risks but also actively managing and mitigating them during the role creation process.

5. Multi-Application Risk Visibility: While many traditional IGA solutions may focus on single-application risk assessments, Pathlock allows for fine-grained analysis across multiple applications. This provides organizations with a holistic view of their risk landscape, ensuring that risks are managed not just within isolated systems but across the entire application ecosystem.

Eliminating False Positives and Negatives

The combination of fine-grained analysis, built-in risk management tools, and real-time risk simulation gives Pathlock Role Management a significant advantage over traditional IGA solutions. By focusing on permission-level risks, Pathlock eliminates the false positives and false negatives that can plague traditional tools. This means that organizations aren’t wasting time chasing down non-existent risks, nor are they overlooking real vulnerabilities.

Conclusion

While traditional IGA has served its purpose in simplifying access management, its limitations in assessing risks at a granular level leave organizations exposed. Pathlock Role Management goes beyond traditional IGA by offering fine-grained risk analysis, advanced mitigation tools, and a proactive approach to role management. With Pathlock, organizations can confidently create and manage enterprise roles, knowing that they have a clear understanding of the true risks involved. In an era of increasing security threats, this level of precision is essential for safeguarding sensitive data and maintaining compliance.

Talk to our experts to understand how Pathlock’s Zero Risk approach to role management enables compliant roles across applications.