Seven Ways Automation Protects PeopleSoft FSCM Data & Streamlines Risk Management

Organizations working with applications like PeopleSoft FSCM often allow internal users, external vendors, and third-party service providers to access sensitive data and perform critical transactions. However, this kind of access often leads to security and compliance risks like phishing/hacking, fraud, and violations of segregation of duties (SoD.) As a result, PeopleSoft customers are automating access governance and management processes to streamline efficiency while reducing the possibility of human error or the rubber stamping of access approvals.

Why It’s Challenging to Manage Risk in PeopleSoft FSCM

• Static access controls and complex workflows prevent organizations from addressing dynamic risks (i.e., compromised user credentials or detecting potential fraud).
• Lack of visibility of vendor creation and vendor management in applications connected to Peoplesoft FSCM.
• Manual IAM processes like provisioning users, detecting potential SoD conflicts, and conducting periodic user access reviews are often unreliable and require a lot of resources.
• Conducting manual security checks and compliance audits can be expensive, cumbersome, and time-consuming – especially when working with external audit firms.
• Limited visibility into user behavior around data access and usage often leads to undetected SoD violations that increase the potential for malicious activity and fraud.

To minimize the risk of fraud, companies need to move away from manual processes and spreadsheets and automate PeopleSoft security controls and IAM processes.

Seven Ways Automation Protects PeopleSoft FSCM Data & Streamlines Risk Management

Today’s organizations require complete visibility into internal controls and business processes that might span multiple systems (not just PeopleSoft FSCM.) Pathlock provides a unified platform that can enable automation in PeopleSoft in the following ways:

1. Role Design: To manage access permissions consistently and avoid conflicts, it is important to have a centralized view of diverse and complex roles. Pathlock automates the process of designing roles by automatically detecting SoD conflicts. Thus eliminating the sea of customized roles that can span into the hundreds or thousands.
2. Automated User Provisioning: Manual IAM processes often leave users waiting for access – as their requests are submitted by helpdesk ticket and can require manual back-and-forth between business managers and IT to establish the correct levels of access. Automation can help organizations streamline these processes, as Pathlock leverages PeopleSoft (and the personnel profile changes made in PeopleSoft) to automatically orchestrate security checks and approval communications. Thus, increasing a user’s speed-to-productivity by up to 80%.  
3. Detect and Resolve SoD Conflicts: Organizations need solutions that automatically review role-level business process conflicts and identify SoD violations. Pathlock detects SoD violations using rules mapped to specific application models. Conflicts are automatically resolved using role recommendations.
4. Emergency Access Management: Reviewers often approve emergency/temporary access requests without understanding the business or financial impact of their access decisions. Pathlock enables secure emergency access management by providing quick and reliable security assessments for temporary roles.
5. Automated User Access Review: Automating the user access review process saves time and cost while improving accuracy. Reviewers can easily identify access conflicts and understand the business impact of their decisions. Pathlock generates actionable audit trails of user activities to ensure no transactions are making it past the business controls and policies implemented.
6. Transaction Monitoring: Many PeopleSoft teams still use spreadsheets that only provide point-in-time visibility into internal controls and transactions. An automated solution can quickly interrogate transactions for a given user that presents a potential risk, ensuring a consistent review using the same criteria across the organization. Pathlock provides transaction monitoring in real-time and gives a granular view of any violations for immediate investigation.
7. Dynamic Data Masking & Transaction Control: PeopleSoft roles can lead to an “all or nothing” approach to data governance. If a user has access to a page – they have access to all the data on that page. This can lead to unnecessary exposure, resulting in non-compliance with regulatory requirements like SOX, GDPR, HIPAA, etc. Pathlock enhances existing access controls by combining role-based security capabilities (RBAC) with attribute-based policies that consider the context of access (who, what, where, when, and how) before allowing a user to access transactions or data. If a user has access to a certain page, Pathlock gives you the freedom to restrict access (or log access) to specific data fields. Providing deeper levels of data governance and the ability to execute forensic audits.

Automating Real-Time Risk Mitigation in PeopleSoft FSCM With Pathlock

Pathlock helps organizations replace legacy (manual) processes with intelligent automation in PeopleSoft – both for uncovering hidden access risks and providing immediate mitigation in the following ways:

• Automating controls for segregation of duties (conflict detection and mitigation) with 100% transaction monitoring.
• Lowering the internal cost of control monitoring and reporting by 80% over manual approaches.
• Minimizing the risk of insider threat by alerting and responding to suspicious activities.
• Monitoring real-time risk across PeopleSoft FSCM and other business applications to establish consistent access compliance policies.
• Facilitating periodic user access reviews via automation.

Download our solution brief to learn how automation with Pathlock can help you secure PeopleSoft FSCM data and mitigate access risks.