What Is Identity Governance and Administration (IGA)?

Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) Explained

IGA is the definitive process for managing digital identity lifecycles and enforcing organizational access policies at scale. IGA solutions fuse the two primary identity functions: Governance and Administration.

Governance focuses on the auditing, policy, and risk side of identity management. It determines who should have access based on business needs and risk tolerance. Administration focuses on the mechanical, day-to-day tasks of granting and revoking access to IT systems.

By unifying these functions, IGA moves beyond simple access management. It transforms identity security from a manual, reactive process into a centralized, automated, and proactive business function. This holistic approach is critical for mitigating insider threats, preventing lateral movement by attackers, and maintaining a verifiable audit trail.

The Challenge

Managing digital identities and access privileges is a significant challenge for many organizations. In today’s world, a diverse collection of users (including employees, contractors, temporary workers and vendors) have access to a wide array of applications and systems scattered across on-premises and cloud-based infrastructure.

Many IT and security organizations continue to rely on manual processes to onboard users and manage their evolving access rights throughout the user lifecycle — a resource-intensive, error-prone, and time-consuming proposition:

• It can take days or even weeks for new hires to gain access to the applications and services they need to perform their jobs.
• Threat actors can exploit over-permissioned or orphaned accounts to steal confidential data and orchestrate attacks.
• Data breaches and cybersecurity incidents can damage a company’s reputation, disrupt business, and result in costly regulatory fines and legal settlements.

IGA solutions are designed to help businesses improve oversight, eliminate human latency and error, and mitigate risk by automating routine digital identity and access rights management functions.

Real-world example: Instead of IT manually fulfilling “give access to X” tickets for days, a user requests access in a portal, the request routes to the data owner, SoD policies are checked automatically, and access is granted immediately after approval—with a clean audit trail.

IGA vs. IAM vs. PAM: The Identity Security Ecosystem

IGA is a specialized, strategic component that complements the functions of Identity and Access Management (IAM) and Privileged Access Management (PAM) within a comprehensive identity security strategy. The relationship between the three is often misunderstood. IGA provides the policy layer for all identities and entitlements, while IAM and PAM execute those policies for their respective identity groups.

These three disciplines work in concert to protect the modern enterprise:

• IGA focuses on the oversight, policy, and compliance aspects for all identities (eg, IGA ensures only the right roles keep Salesforce access over time (and removes it when roles change).
• IAM focuses on authentication and basic access for all users (eg, IAM handles login (SSO/MFA) for Salesforce).
• PAM focuses on high-risk, non-human, and privileged access (eg, PAM governs elevated access (e.g., temporary admin to production systems) and records sessions).

Comparison of the Identity Security Ecosystem Disciplines

Table 1: Differences Between IGA, IAM, and PAM

Core Pillars of Identity Governance and Administration

Effective IGA solutions are built on automated capabilities that manage access rights throughout the identity lifecycle and across diverse IT systems. These capabilities must be integrated with HR systems, cloud directories, and IT service management tools to eliminate manual intervention, which is a common source of risk and latency.

Identity governance and administration (IGA) is built on a few core pillars that keep access both usable and controlled. Together, these pillars define how an organization grants access, reviews it over time, enforces policy, and proves compliance—without turning every request into a slow, manual bottleneck.

Identity Lifecycle Management

Identity Lifecycle Management (ILM) automates the end-to-end lifecycle of a digital identity, ensuring appropriate controls are applied from creation through retirement.

This pillar focuses on three crucial stages:

1. Onboarding (Joiner): Automatically provisions initial access rights and accounts required by a user’s job role or defined policies, significantly reducing time-to-productivity for new employees.
2. Transfers (Mover): Automatically adjusts access rights when an employee changes roles, applying the principle of least privilege by revoking entitlements no longer required and provisioning those that are.
3. Offboarding (Leaver): Immediately and automatically de-provisions or suspends all accounts and entitlements when an employee leaves the organization, minimizing the critical risk window posed by dormant or orphaned accounts.

Access Requests and Provisioning

IGA administers access requests through a self-service model, ensuring that every requested entitlement is vetted against predefined security policies before automated provisioning occurs. Users can use a self-service portal to request access to specific applications or data. The IGA solution then:

• Checks the request against Segregation of Duties (SoD) policies to prevent toxic access combinations.
• Routes the request through intelligent, pre-defined workflows for supervisory or policy approval.
• Automatically provisions access immediately upon approval, and de-provisions it upon expiration.

Access Certification and Review

Access Certification, also known as access review, is a governance control that regularly validates that a user’s current access rights remain appropriate and necessary for their role. This is a non-negotiable requirement for many compliance mandates. IGA automates this process by:

• Scheduling periodic reviews (e.g., quarterly or annually) for specific high-risk resources.
• Presenting reviewers (like managers or application owners) with simple-to-use dashboards showing current access.
• Recording all approvals and rejections in an immutable audit trail for forensic and compliance purposes.

Entitlement and Policy Enforcement

The IGA solution monitors and enforces the entire set of access policies, ensuring that security and business rules are consistently applied across all applications and infrastructure. This involves managing a large number of granular entitlements, the specific rights granted to an identity. IGA's policy engine centrally governs these entitlements, providing a crucial check against permission creep and unauthorized changes.

Why IGA Is Critical for Modern Enterprises

IGA is no longer a luxury but a fundamental necessity for organizations operating in complex hybrid environments where identities are the new perimeter.

Mitigating Risk and Preventing Data Breaches

IGA substantially reduces the attack surface by enforcing least privilege and minimizing the presence of unused or excessive access rights. Unmanaged identities and over-permissioned accounts are prime targets for threat actors, as documented extensively by Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 research. IGA systematically eliminates these vulnerabilities by providing access discovery to map every identity and entitlement, allowing security teams to revoke unnecessary privileges before they are exploited.

Streamlining Audit and Regulatory Compliance

IGA is the single most effective tool for generating the verifiable evidence required by internal and external auditors for major compliance frameworks. The automation of access certification, segregation-of-duties checks, and the generation of detailed, tamper-proof reports drastically reduces the time and cost associated with compliance efforts.

Frameworks commonly supported include:

• Financial/IT: Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF), SOC 2, New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS).
• Data Privacy: General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
• Healthcare: Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Enhancing Operational Efficiency

Automating provisioning and access request workflows improves overall organizational agility and eliminates critical IT friction points. Instead of days or weeks of manual ticket processing, IGA allows new employees to gain required access within minutes. This reduces help desk calls, increases the security team's focus on strategic tasks, and improves user satisfaction across the organization.

Business-Level Outcomes of IGA

A well-implemented identity governance and administration (IGA) program delivers measurable business value beyond security. By standardizing how access is granted, reviewed, and documented, IGA turns identity processes into repeatable controls that reduce operational drag and compliance risk.

Reduced Audit Burden

IGA centralizes access records and approvals into a defensible audit trail. Instead of hunting through tickets, spreadsheets, and email chains, teams can quickly show who had access, why they had it, who approved it, and when it changed—shrinking audit prep time and disruption.

Simplified Access Reviews

Access certifications become faster and more accurate because IGA automates review campaigns and presents clean, role-based dashboards to the right decision-makers (managers and application/data owners). This reduces review fatigue, improves accountability, and makes it easier to remove stale access before it becomes risk.

Faster Role Provisioning

By integrating with HR and directory systems, IGA automates joiner/mover/leaver workflows and provisions access based on roles and policy. The result is less ticket backlog, faster time-to-productivity for employees, and fewer “temporary” entitlements that quietly become permanent.

Improving Regulatory Compliance

IGA solutions help organizations comply with a variety of government and industry regulations and architectures, including:

• Data privacy mandates (HIPAA, GDPR, CCPA, GLBA)
• Cybersecurity rules (SOX, SWIFT CSCF, EU Directive on Network and Information Systems, NERP CIP, FISMA)
• Cybersecurity frameworks (COBIT IT Governance Framework, NIST Cybersecurity Framework, NIST Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity, NIST SP 800-207 ZTA)

Some IGA solutions include detailed event logs, administrative reports, and dashboards that IT, risk management, and security professionals can use to monitor compliance and provide evidence of compliance to internal auditors or outside attestation firms.

Implementation Steps for an IGA Program

Once you’ve decided to implement an IGA solution—or maybe replace your legacy IGA with a Modern IGA solution—then the process is fairly straightforward. Steps involved vary somewhat but include the following:

• Initiate project management—success criteria, milestones, personnel, meeting cadence, etc.
• Identify applications to integrate, primary user directory, and SSO provider information.
• Integrate the IGA with your directory and SSO applications.
• Integrate applications, mapping accounts to users in the directory, and defining permissions.
• Create custom actions, access review configurations, and execute an access review.
• Continue with user provisioning setup, configuration, and verification.

IGA and the Zero Trust Security Model

IGA is a prerequisite for achieving a mature Zero Trust architecture, serving as the continuous policy-enforcement point for all access. The core principle of Zero Trust is "never trust, always verify." IGA embodies this by continuously governing the trust established for every identity.

IGA supports Zero Trust by:

1. Continuous Verification: Ensuring the access rights granted to an identity remain valid and minimal over time, regardless of where the identity is connecting from.
2. Microsegmentation and Least Privilege: Driving down access to the lowest possible level by applying granular entitlements that are time-bound and purpose-bound.
3. Contextual Policy: Integrating with tools like IAM solutions to inform real-time decisions, ensuring access is revoked or elevated based on factors like time, location, device health, and observed user behavior.

Operational Challenges and Attack Containment Behavior

While IGA offers significant security benefits, organizations face operational challenges during implementation and maintenance. If not managed, these difficulties can create security gaps that threat actors exploit.

Common IGA Challenges

1. Data Quality and Integrity Issues

• Inaccurate Source Data: The IGA platform's effectiveness hinges on clean, accurate data from identity stores and Human Resources (HR) systems. Subpar data quality results in incorrect access grants and improperly provisioned accounts.
• Manual Maintenance Risk: Over-reliance on manual processes for entitlement and role cleanup increases the risk of human error and significantly slows down the enforcement of security policies.

2. Connector Complexity

• Integration with Specialized/Legacy Systems: Integrating the IGA platform with specialized, homegrown, or legacy systems often requires developing resource-intensive custom connectors.

3. Policy and Role Management Overload

• Unmanageable Complexity: Developing an excessive number of fine-grained policies or roles creates an overly complex system that is difficult to manage, audit, and debug. This complexity can inadvertently degrade system performance or introduce security vulnerabilities.

IGA’s Role in Attack Containment

In an active breach scenario, IGA data is vital for rapid remediation and attack containment. The ability to visualize all access points and privileges associated with a compromised user is critical. A modern Security Operations Center (SOC) leverages the identity context from IGA to disrupt attacker operations.

For instance, if Unit 42 analysts identify a successful privilege escalation, the IGA audit trail can immediately show what entitlements the threat actor gained and how they acquired them.

Integrating IGA with threat detection and response platforms enables automated policy changes. This can include quarantining the identity immediately and revoking all standing and Just-in-Time (JIT) access to contain the breach. The goal is to interrupt the attack lifecycle and quickly prevent further lateral movement.

Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) FAQs