In telecommunications, the term provisioning indicates the act of acquiring a service. Previously, it was a manual process and involved multiple individuals and a myriad of steps to complete the process. While it took several days to get the job done, the possibility of error would always remain. Each time an individual joined an organization, had a shift in their role or left, all the steps had to be manually performed.
However, as the business landscape has become tech-driven and fast-paced there is little to no time to perform such arduous tasks. To put a stop to such predicaments automated access provisioning is now being adopted by companies worldwide. But what is it?
In this article, we are going to discuss what is automated access provisioning and how it can help your organization. Read along to find out.
What is automated access provisioning?
Automated provisioning, automated user provisioning, or self-service provisioning is the method of granting and managing access to applications, systems, and data within an organization, through automated practices. It is policy-based management, where access is granted based on permission or role. It eliminates human intervention in the life cycle management process. Automated access provisioning grants access to employees within an organization to the applications, software, and data required to perform specific tasks.
What is user deprovisioning?
User deprovisioning is basically the opposite of access provisioning. In this case, the access to a specific tool, software, or database is revoked from an existing user or a group of users. It helps in the safekeeping of data and other sensitive information. But under what circumstances can access be revoked? Here are some instances:
1. A user has left the organization or has been shifted to a different business role.
2. The business role has been deleted or deactivated.
3. A resource authorization has passed its date of validity.
4. A business role has been modified.
How does automated access provisioning work?
Automated provisioning makes life simpler in various ways. It automates the provisioning of applications and other resources to workers within your organization. It is way more efficient than traditional processes that require IT and HR departments to manually move user access requests to multiple stakeholders until approved, processed, and activated. Automated provisioning lets employees access resources and applications based on their permission levels and roles.
For instance, James joins the finance department of your organization as a junior accountant. In this case, he will have access to only those applications required to fulfill his role. When he is promoted to the position of a senior accountant, the access will be automatically adjusted. The access is also automatically revoked when an employee leaves the organization.
How can you benefit from automated provisioning?
Automated access provisioning is becoming increasingly popular, especially when organizations are rapidly shifting from manual to automatic processes. Here are some of the benefits that you can get from implementing automated access provisioning.
1. Minimizes cost: It is no secret that the initial cost of deploying automated access provisioning is high. However, in the long run, it saves your organization will save
money on onboarding and operational costs. It also saves time for the IT and HR departments, which can be translated in terms of money. These departments can also devote their time to other activities.
2. Increases accuracy: Automated provisioning eliminates human intervention, and therefore it brings down the chances of human error and improves the overall efficiency of the organization.
3. Assured compliance: Provisioning for different levels of access and permissions based on your organization’s data security, you can trace account activities and comply with regulatory policies.
4. Easily scalable: Automated provisioning is easily scalable and can be adapted depending on the organization’s pace of growth. It helps with the lifecycle management of users by adding them to specific roles and allowing the system to provision and deprovision the tools and applications required to perform specific tasks.
5. Optimizes performances: Automated access provisioning minimizes human errors, and employees can focus on other important tasks without having to worry about account activities and data security within the organization.
6. Streamlines operations: Auto-provisioning reduces the need for administrators to micro-manage application accounts and other activities since most of them are on auto-pilot mode. All functions are integrated into one central system that can be monitored as and when required.
7. Saves time: Since the administrators and other departments spend less time in manual supervision, it leaves them with more room to ideate, strategize and focus on important matters, while automated provisioning handles other processes.
Conclusion
Automated provisioning helps secure and speed up the provisioning of user access, which aids in securing, scaling, and optimizing the onboarding and lifecycle management process. Although it can be cost-intensive in the beginning, the merits of the system can be realized in the long run.