What is automated provisioning?

What is automated provisioning?

Automated provisioning, or automated user provisioning, is the method of granting and managing access to applications, systems and data within an organization, through automated practices. Automated provisioning is the first key tenet to identity and access management (IAM).

But just as automated provisioning can deploy and activate services for users, it can also remove user access to systems, applications and data. This is called automated deprovisioning, or deprovisioning. The act of provisioning and deprovisioning of user access is a form of lifecycle management, for onboarding and offboarding employees as change occurs within an organization.

How does automated provisioning work?

In the context of identity governance and IAM, automated provisioning automates the provisioning of applications and other resources to workers within an organization. It’s much more efficient than traditional processes that involve manually moving user access requests to multiple stakeholders until approved, processed, and activated.

But how does it work? Automated provisioning grants employees access to applications and resources based on their role and permission levels.

1. When a new worker starts at your company, the company’s identity security platform will assign that employee a role through their system.
2. The team member is granted access to applications based on their role.
3. If they change roles or leave the organization, their access will be automatically adjusted or revoked.

Automated provisioning is a simple way to create, modify, and delete user accounts based on the changes within your organization. It ensures you give the right access permissions to the right individuals.

Benefits of automated provisioning

Automated provisioning helps relieve the burden and risk of manual provisioning, and increases the efficiency of managing access as users join, change roles, or leave an organization. Other benefits of an automated provisioning solution include the following.

Streamlined onboarding

Imagine manually onboarding and provisioning hundreds of new employees at once. If you’re an enterprise organization without IAM, that’s often the case. How do you provision hundreds of new users to their respected systems and applications efficiently?

Automated provisioning allows you to remove the onboarding burden from your Human Resources or IT department. Organizations can add their new employees, contractors, consultants, etc. into the identity management system, and through automated provisioning, they’ll get access to specific applications and resources needed to do their job.

Automated provisioning also increases productivity by giving users the access they need on day one. Users don't have to wait to receive access and are empowered to start their work immediately.

Cost savings

Cost reduction in the context of automated provisioning is two-fold: Productivity and efficiency. By reducing manual provisioning processes, you can free up time and resources for other tasks. You also avoid user downtime when they don't have the access they need which results in greater productivity, lowering operational costs, and improved operational efficiency.

Error reduction

Because automated provisioning eliminates manual processes, it also greatly reduces the margin of error. There’s less of a chance of a mistake when adding a user to the system and provisioning access to applications.

In addition, by automating user provisioning, you reduce the risk of security threats and data breaches, as the only way to get access to these applications is through the roles and permissions set up by the organization.

Organizations have full visibility into who has access to what, significantly reducing risk of a security mishap.

Why your company needs automated provisioning

With the level of change that takes place within a company, it’s important to swiftly and efficiently provision and deprovision applications and tools to team members in your organization.

Automated provisioning helps with the lifecycle management of users by speeding up user access, implementing changes based on predefined policies, supporting monitoring and audit processes, and reducing risk.

SailPoint and automated provisioning

SailPoint solutions help you achieve productivity and efficiency, reduce human error, increase security, achieve greater audit capabilities, and much more by automating provisioning.

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