Overview of Compliant Access Delivery

The overall goal of Compliant Access Delivery is to reduce the need for end-users to request additional access, also known as “exceptions.” Access not granted by a person’s roles is considered an exception and must go through a controlled yet easy-to-use process before being granted. Exceptions represent an additional risk and create extra work to be processed and approved, as well as audited during compliance recertifications. EmpowerID’s best practice approach to exceptions management ensures that exceptions are always based on proper justification, traceable and auditable, manageable, and temporary whenever possible. To help organizations achieve the best possible outcome delivering compliant access, Compliant Access Delivery in EmpowerID includes the following components:

• IT Shop

• Eligibility

• Approvals and Approval Routing

IT Shop

EmpowerID provides a central location called the "IT Shop" from which users can request access to the IT resources your organization makes available. To request resources, users navigate to the IT Shop, where they can see their current resources and request access to more. Depending on their job function, users may also request roles for other users. To shop for or request membership access to a  role, they simply select the role type and search for the specific roles belonging to that type. Once they have found the role, they request access, which opens a drawer. From the drawer, users can optionally place time constraints on the request and add it to their carts or simply close the drawer to discontinue. Once a requested role is added to a user’s cart, it stays there until the user either checks out (submits the cart) or removes it. By keeping roles in the cart, users can navigate away from the IT Shop as needed without losing the contents of their carts. When ready to submit their access requests, users review the roles in their cart, add a reason for requesting those roles and then submit them to the Identity and Access Management platform (EmpowerID). If they decide they don’t want to request a role that is in their cart, they can simply remove that role.

Figure 1 below shows the main flow that occurs for users shopping for roles in the IT Shop, as well as the user interface in which the flow occurs.

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If users have the delegations needed to add themselves or another to the requested role(s) without requiring approval, EmpowerID grants them immediate membership; otherwise, EmpowerID routes request for approval. When approval is required, the process can involve multiple levels of approval depending on the type of resource requested, the user’s existing resources and the parameters applied to the workflows responsible for processing the requests. Approval may first be required from the user’s manager before those requests can be further processed. When such approval is required and the manager rejects a request, no updates occur. If, however, manager approval is not required, the process continues to the next level, which in the case of Business Roles is submission to the RBAC engine for final approval by role owners or other delegated users (when required). For groups the process requires the same final approval. However, before reaching that stage, the workflow determines whether it needs to check each requested role assignment for potential Separation of Duties (SoD) violations. If true, each request is evaluated by the Separation of Duties (SoD) engine to determine whether the resulting role assignment would trigger a violation of current SoD policies. If any potential violations is detected, the workflow routes each violating request to a corresponding risk owner, who must either approve or reject those requests. If there are no SoD violations—or a risk owner approves violations—the requests are then submitted to the RBAC engine for final operational approval in the same way as Business Role requests. In the same manner, if the workflow does not require SoD evaluation, requests are submitted for final operational approval. At any time, rejection by anyone in the approval pipeline stops the assignment. In all cases, EmpowerID maintains a complete record of the business process, including:

• Who made the request

• The requested role

• From where the request originated (IP)

• The date and time of the request

• Whether the request was approved or denied

• Who approved or denied the request

• The date and time of the approval or denial

Eligibility

The critical aspect of providing a simple end-user experience for access requests and to ensure that only compliant access can be requested is controlling which items different types of users see and may request. Suppose all end users are presented with the same catalog of requestable items. In that case, the user experience quickly becomes overwhelming and confusing as users must filter through large amounts of data to find the access they are looking for that would be relevant for them to request. Exposing unnecessary data also creates a severe security vulnerability as external users or potentially malicious actors may browse the entire catalog of the organization’s most sensitive roles and resources. Also crucial for regulatory compliance is to blacklist or explicitly deny the ability of certain groups of users ever to see or request specific roles and resources to enforce country-specific restrictions such as the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).

Eligibility Policies

EmpowerID offers a powerful policy engine to control which users may see and request which roles and resources in the IT Shop. These policies are known as “Eligibility.” Eligibility policies may apply to users by attribute query, role, group, or other criteria, making it easy to target who receives which policies and have the assignment automated and maintained throughout their lifecycle. To further ease the administrative burden, Eligibility policies can be applied to all requestable items of a type by location in addition to one-by-one. This allows policies to be broader, granting or excluding eligibility using the EmpowerID Location tree. For roles, eligibility policies can be applied to their members to control what those members may see and request in the IT Shop. Policies also apply to the role itself as a possible IT Shop item to control who may see and request it.

Eligibility policies can be defined as either inclusion rules or exclusion rules. Inclusion rules define the items a user is authorized to see and request in the IT Shop and ensure these are only the ones that would make sense for them to request. An application example could be rules that filter resources available for Field Sales employees and developers. The catalog of requestable roles and resources available to each of those employees should be different ensure that unwarranted access requests are not generated, creating unnecessary approval tasks. Additionally, inclusion and exclusion rules help organizations provide employees a more pleasant user shopping experience as they are shielded from

Inclusion rules include the following:

• Eligible – Users can request items in the IT Shop, and the request will go for approval unless the requesting person has the RBAC delegations needed to grant the access being requested.

• Pre-Approved – Users assigned the policies are pre-approved for the items to which the policy is applicable. When the IT Shop user later requests access, it will not require an approval step before being fulfilled. 

• Suggested – The IT Shop item will show a “Suggested” additional item they may request because of their existing roles or in the context of a role they are currently requesting. The item will still follow standard approval routing rules. 

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Approvals and Approval Routing

EmpowerID includes a powerful approval routing engine and friendly end-user interfaces for task tracking and decisions. As discussed above, Eligibility policies are considered when calculating if a request requires approval and if so, how many approval steps and to whom should the tasks be assigned at each step. Determination of the approval process is dynamic and considers the roles of the requestor, the sensitivity of the items being requested, and an organization’s risk and Segregation of Duties (SoD) policies. Based on these factors, approval for a requested item may not be required or it could require multiple levels of approval and an additional SoD approval by a risk owner.

Approvers are notified via configurable and localized email notifications with reminder emails configured based on flexible policies. All decisions at each step in the process are logged and traceable up to and including the final fulfillment of access.

See Also

Risk Management