User account provisioning is a business process used to create and manage access to an IT system’s resources. In order to be effective, the process of creating an account and granting access to data and software should not only be consistent but also simple to administer.
User provisioning has become a major challenge for enterprises that want to reduce their burden of account management while also seeking to minimize any associated danger to the company and its data. The complexity of your user provisioning process is typically related to the risk associated with the resources the user will access.
Automated account provisioning is one of the most popular forms of account provisioning. This smoothens the process of adding and effectively managing user credentials and provides administrators with the most effective way to track users provided with access to any specific applications and data sources.
Steps for Automating User Account Provisioning
The list below explains how a cloud identity solution such as that provided by TOOLS4EVER can help automate account provisioning:
- Your solution will require a source provider. This is usually a database or spreadsheet such as Oracle, ODBC, ExcelSheet, SQL, etc. This database will include the various users and their respective account provisioning.
- Next, you will need a destination. TOOLS4EVER uses Active Directory but you can also select other types of destination providers in order to move data into different repositories rather than Active Directory.
- Select the type of object you want to sync, e.g. “Mailbox,” “User,” “Contact,” etc.
- The template you use will show you some Required Fields. You will still be able to manually add extra user attributes.
- Putting source fields into the destination field (attributes) is made possible through field mapping. In order to define unique records, you will need a primary key. Field mapping can also provide you with the power to modify source data beforehand, synchronizing it with the destination provider while the process is still in progress. All this is validated for every individual record and can automatically help you with data normalization, modification, validation, and correction.
- You can also give a specific, easy-to-remember name to your job. While this has nothing to do with the flow, it does increase user-friendliness and lets you easily refer to the process in the future.
- Preview or run your job in order to verify the changes before they are committed.
- Develop a schedule in order to run the job on the basis of desired update frequency.
Conclusion
After you have implemented the user provisioning solution in your organization, make sure to monitor it monthly, quarterly, or annually. Also, track the number of user provisioning requests handled, internal audit findings, the time required to address provisioning requests, and user experience to continuously improve the process.
To increase security, always provide users with the minimum information they need, i.e., provide them with only the data they require to perform their jobs. Furthermore, make sure you allow and deny access very carefully. Lastly, use Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) to provide your system with some extra layers of protection.
