Enforce Governance and meet Compliance for a zero-trust, least-privilege security posture
Today, an enterprise’s biggest challenge is managing who can access what IT assets. Adding more cloud services and a larger workforce effectively makes it impossible for organizations to track their users and access rights manually anymore. This is where IGA solutions come into the picture.
IGA (Identity Governance and Administration) solutions provide organizations with an organized and automated method for managing the identities and access rights of users across all of their IT assets (systems). It combines identity administration (creating and removing accounts) with identity governance (compliance, policies, and access reviews). The result is a smarter, scalable approach to access management.
In this blog, we’ll cover the key benefits of advanced IGA solutions like Hire2Retire, the most impactful use cases, and how modern IGA automation is changing enterprise identity management.
As more organizations adopt hybrid/multi-cloud infrastructures, their number of user accounts, applications, and access permissions will all continue to grow at a rapid rate. Because there is no centralized way of managing access (i.e., spreadsheets and manual approvals), IT teams are forced to manage access without any idea of how to do so. This creates several potential issues:
All of these issues can be resolved with an identity governance platform. According to the Identity Defined Security Alliance, the majority of IT leaders (just over 33%) believe that the primary reason for their investment in IGA is due to the time-consuming manual tasks associated with identity management and and cybersecurity risks. Organizations that automate their identity management processes have reported significant decreases in the number of IT tickets, improved onboarding efficiency, and a stronger security posture.
If you’re thinking about which IGA tool you can consider, Hire2Retire is a strong option. It automates the entire employee lifecycle, including onboarding, role transitions, and offboarding, using automated provisioning, access reviews, and policy enforcement. With centralized identity governance, Hire2Retire eases manual effort, helps meet compliance requirements, reduces the risk of inappropriate access, and increases the efficiency of both HR and IT functions within your company.
We’ll talk more about it later, let’s just understand the advantages of IGA solutions first.
You would be amazed to know that the global IGA market was valued at USD 7.95 billion in 2024 and is on track to reach USD 27.11 billion by 2033, growing at a 14.9% CAGR. This growth is driven by rising compliance demands, hybrid cloud adoption, and the increasing cost of identity-based threats. Here are some key benefits that make IGA essential for modern businesses.
Stronger security is the primary benefit of an IGA solution. Modern IGA solutions enforce the Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP) so that all users have access only to what they really need to perform their jobs.
By restricting user access, you can effectively limit the attack surface for malicious users. If a user account becomes compromised, the extent of damage is limited by the amount of access that was linked to that user account. Additionally, IGA detects toxic combinations (a combination of access that puts two or more entitlements at risk) of entitlements, dormant accounts, and overprovisioning before security incidents occur.
Advanced IGA platforms use behavioral analytics to flag unusual activity. This includes logging in from an unfamiliar location or downloading information that the user has never downloaded before. It generates a real-time automated notification and starts the remediation workflow process.
IGA solutions make it significantly easier to manage your compliance with GDPR, HIPAA, SOX, and NIST. This is because every access change (grant, revoke, approval) and review of access are automatically logged in real-time. When auditors request evidence (of compliance), generating a report can usually be done in minutes, rather than weeks.
Automated access certification ensures that managers formally review access by their employees at regular intervals. As a result, rather than relying on email to obtain approvals, the IGA provides managers with review tasks, captures the decisions made, and stamps the decisions with a date and time. Therefore, this takes the compliance process from being reactive to a systematic, policy-based process.
The IGA platform provides automated identity lifecycle management in three stages: the addition of new employees, the transfer of existing employees into different roles, and the termination of employees.
When an HR department adds a new employee to a system, their accounts will automatically be created across multiple connected applications. Also, when an employee moves from one department to another, that employee’s access will automatically update based on their new job responsibilities. And, when an employee terminates their employment, their access will be terminated within minutes after HR updates their status to terminated.
Using automation to manage the entire identity lifecycle process, businesses eliminate the time delays and manual errors that occur with a spreadsheet-based process to manage the three stages of an employee’s life. Additionally, automating this process eliminates the security risks associated with granting access to former employees, who can often be a significant source of data breaches for organizations.
When IT departments have to spend several hours provisioning access and responding to access-related ticket requests, that leaves little time for strategic activities. Many IGA solutions can eliminate routine administrative tasks by automatically approving low-risk access requests according to established policies, as well as automating the routing of high-risk requests to the appropriate approver with complete context attached.
Organizations implementing next-generation enterprise IGA solutions can save up to 90% savings in IT team time and efforts. With this, IT team can focus more on other more strategic and high-value initiatives that drive business growth.
With IGA solutions, instead of logging into multiple applications to determine who has access to what, you’ll now log into one application for all of that information through a centralized dashboard. IT and security teams can monitor all user access to all applications (cloud and on-premise) from one location. As a result, managing access becomes easier, risk is mitigated, and compliance with company policies is consistent and maintained.
This summary provides a concise overview of some of the most significant use cases for IGA (identity governance and administration) to address challenges that IT, security, and compliance teams face daily.
| Use Case | What It Does | Key Benefit | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Automated Provisioning | Creates and removes accounts according to human resources activity | Faster onboarding process; built-in orphan account protection | |
| Access Certification | Provides automated periodic access reviews to managers | Audit readiness and compliance | |
| Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) | Provides permissions based on job function | Consistency of access; decreased human error | |
| JML Lifecycle Management | Updates user access as users join, transfer, or leave | Prevents privilege creep | |
| Privileged Access Governance | Administered and monitored by automated control and management for admin-level access | Decrease probability of a data breach | |
| Segregation of Duties (SoD) | Prevention of conflicting access combinations | Prevention of fraud and audit issues | |
| Self-Service Access Requests | Allows users to request access via a portal | Decrease number of IT support requests; faster access | |
| Third-Party Vendor Access | Time-limited access for contractors and vendors | Limit risk exposure to external parties | |
| Just-In-Time (JIT) Access | Grant temporary elevated access on demand | Eliminate permanent admin rights | |
| Compliance Reporting | Audit-ready reports generated on demand | Compliance with SOX, HIPAA, and GDPR regulations |
Using IGA platforms that integrate with your organization’s HR system (e.g., using Workday or BambooHR), create an account for a new employee automatically in all of their systems and apps, such as email, enterprise resource planning (ERP), collaboration tools, etc., without requiring any manual intervention or delay.
For example, a new sales rep will be added in Workday on Friday and have access to all of their systems set up by Monday morning, including email, customer relationship management (CRM), and document storage. No need to submit an IT ticket.
Under compliance frameworks like Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), there are regular requirements for reviewing who has access to what systems/applications (aka access certification).
Rather than sending spreadsheets to management for review, IGA solutions send automated access certification tasks to the manager. The manager checks the team’s access and can quickly approve or deny it with just one click.
The risk of fraud arises from certain combinations of access. For example, because a user can create vendors and approve payments, the user could approve fraudulent payments. The IGA solution prevents these toxic combinations by preventing access to users who would cause an access conflict. Whenever the IGA system detects a request for user access that may lead to a conflict, the request is immediately denied, and the security team is notified.
The IGA platform provides temporary, as-needed access for administrators, rather than permanent elevated privileges. For instance, a DevOps engineer can get root access for a two-hour maintenance window, complete their tasks, and then their access will expire. Everything they do during this period will be logged.
The IGA solution lowers a big security risk by taking away permanent administrator access, but it still lets users do their jobs when they need to.
When contractors, consultants, or third-party vendors need access to your systems, they usually are granted a 30-day period to complete their accounts, which can result in them having access long after their contracts have expired.
The IGA (Identity Governance Administration) solution ties the access granted to the vendors with the beginning and end dates of their contract. Hence, it revokes access once the contract has ended automatically. You can even check the activity of these contractors or third-party vendors easily
Not all IGA solutions are appropriate for all organizations. The effective selection of an IGA solution will depend upon factors such as the industry in which you work, the size of your employee base, and the number of applications that you manage, as well as your compliance requirements.
When evaluating an enterprise IGA solution, it is best to look for a platform that has pre-built connectors to your major systems, automated Joiner-Mover-Leaver (JML) workflows, a self-service catalogue for access requests, separation of duties (SoD) enforcement, and good compliance reporting capabilities.
Additionally, the platform should include the ability to use behavioral analytics to provide threat assessment and ongoing identification of risk. And Hire2Retire has exactly does this. It is a lightweight, no-code IGA solution. Hire2Retire automates your entire workforce lifecycle, from when they start to when they leave, by connecting your HR systems to your Active Directory, Entra ID (aka Azure AD), and/or Google Workspace.
By deploying the platform, you can eliminate the hidden costs of poor workforce lifecycle management, including:
By automating identity management, maintaining access rights, and integrating your HR/IT workflows, Hire2Retire reduces workload, improves security, and simplifies compliance while generating measurable savings. Want to learn more about picking the right IGA tool? Read our buyers guide on IGA
Today, IGA solutions are both more than basic rule-based automations. They leverage AI and machine learning to make more intelligent, quicker access decisions. Below are examples of IGA Automation implementations:
These capabilities don’t just improve processes, but they offer real, measurable business impact.
Some companies that have executed an Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) solution have reported measurable benefits in security, compliance, and operational efficiencies. Some examples are as follows:
IGA is not something you should consider investing in in the future; it is a necessity for today! Many businesses still manage access manually. This puts them at risk for breaches, audit failures, and costly operational inefficiencies.
But with Hire2Retire, you don’t have to worry about anything. This no-code IGA tool eliminates manual access management, automates the entire employee lifecycle, reduces security risks, and ensures the right people have the right access at the right time, every time.
Curious to know more about how Hire2Retire can help your business? Talk to our experts today!
SSO allows users to authenticate themselves through a single login across many applications. However, IGA provides governance for what those users can access (i.e., access management). In summary, we can think of SSO as the authentication layer and IGA as the authorization layer (and lifecycle management).
Absolutely! Modern IGA platforms are cloud-based solutions and are designed to work regardless of where your employees are located. With IGA, all provisioning, reviewing, and revoking of user access is based on HR records, not physical location; therefore, these capabilities make IGA extremely beneficial for companies with dispersed or hybrid workforces.
IGA platforms can be set up to automatically suspend (or temporarily revoke) access for an employee who is on long-term leave and can automatically re-establish (or provision) that access when the employee returns based on their HR record. This helps eliminate the potential risk of having dormant accounts during an employee’s leave period.
Not at all! Although the early adopters of IGA were primarily large enterprises, today’s modern IGA solutions, such as Hire2Retire, have been designed in a manner that makes them very easy for mid-sized companies to adopt. Many of these solutions provide no-code setup, pre-built connectors, and scalable pricing that make them affordable for companies regardless of their IT budget or team size.
IGA controls access for all users in an organization, whereas PAM deals specifically with the secure monitoring of accounts that have been given access to high-risk environments, like IT administrators or team managers. A complete identity security plan uses both types of access management tools — IGA provides broad governance over access to systems, while PAM is responsible for managing elevated levels of access to those systems.
