What is Deprovisioning and why is it important?

What is Deprovisioning?

Deprovisioning refers to withdrawing a user's access from various SAAS app accounts and network systems at the same time. Deprovisioning protects the organization's security and confidentiality by preventing former employees from accessing corporate resources after they leave. When an employee leaves a firm or changes responsibilities within the organization, the Deprovisioning action is triggered.

It’s an Identity and Access Management (IAM) solution that manages and maintains a user’s identity and characteristics in connection to accessing resources in one or more systems.

Consequently, when any user is “deprovisioned”, that user’s identity, assets and all of its related accounts across the organization’s applications/services ecosystem are deleted without needing manual intervention. All granted permissions and authorizations are securely revoked, as a result.

Why is Deprovisioning important?

employees, contractors, vendors, and partners perpetually join and leave organizations, while gaining access to thousands of different tools and applications in the process. But every time they are moved to a different part of the organization or leave the company, they need to be properly offboarded and deprovisioned.  Deprovisioning offers a number of benefits, with the most notable being security, i.e., preventing unwanted data exposure and breach of information.

1. Prevents data exposure

Former employees pose huge security risks if not properly deprovisioned, which is why it’s important to deprovision access immediately after an employee leaves the company.

Imagine if an employee was given privileged access to critical company data and then terminated due to unfavorable reasons. If their accounts were not properly deprovisioned, they’ll continue to receive access to classified information—posing  danger to the organization. 

2. Removes orphaned accounts

Properly ensuring user accounts are being revoked post employee termination is vital to the security of an enterprise. Failure to offboard and deprovision can lead to orphaned accounts.

Orphaned user accounts are accounts that contain all the previous employees’ information but aren’t currently assigned to anyone. Without a robust identity management solution that can automate the account removal process, these accounts can sit dormant, becoming a hotbed for hackers and cyber criminals to easily gather company data and infiltrate a network—potentially leading to data breach.

Easily offboard employees: Create and maintain employees’ user attributes, such as usernames, roles, and profiles, and automatically assign access permissions and user accounts based on predefined roles and flexible entitlement rules.

Eliminate human error:

Because automated provisioning eliminates manual processes, it also greatly reduces the margin of error. It eliminates manual operations, the margin of error is considerably reduced. When adding a user to the system and providing access to programs, there’s less of a possibility of making a mistake.

How does it work?

When a user is offboarded or changes roles, deprovisioning removes their access rights and deletes accounts associated with the user. And while it used to be a manual process of HR teams communicating info to the IT department and then system admins to revoke access, this process can now easily be automated. Automated deprovisioning can be done through an identity and access management (IAM) tool.

IAM tools integrate with company directories, so when employees move to another department or leave the organization, the user will be removed (if terminated) and all accounts associated with them will be automatically adjusted or revoked.

Automated Provisioning and deprovisioning

Manual deprovisioning comes with huge security risks. There can be instances where the person responsible for deprovisioning might delay the task or in some cases, may forget it. As a result, old accounts laden with permissions continue to accumulate in the directory, with several ex-employees having active accounts in your company’s domain. In a situation such as this, data breaches by ex-employees should not come as a surprise.

Automated deprovisioning can help prevent these precarious mishaps and eliminate human error, which can prove costly for your organization. Automated deprovisioning removes a user account from Active Directory and revokes all user entitlements. In the same way Automated Provisioning entails automating the procedures of adding, updating as well as managing their access. The task takes a few minutes as compared to the lengthy manual process, and it effectively enhances network security.

Provisioning and Deprovisioning with miniOrange

With miniOrange and our wide range of User Provisioning solutions, you can create, manage, & delete your external and internal users’ access to on-premises, cloud, and hybrid apps.

We also have pre-integrated apps for Provisioning and Deprovisioning:

1. Azure/Active Directory

2. G-Suite App

3. Microsoft 365

4. Salesforce

Linked is an overview of our Provisioning solutions as well as in-depth steps to implement the solution. miniOrange can set up a complete automation for User Provisioning in your organization in no time! We have both cloud and on premise solutions available based on the organization’s requirements.

Check out all of our pre-existing Provisioning integrated apps here. 

Article source: https://article-realm.com/article/Computers/50446-What-is-Deprovisioning-and-why-is-it-important.html