Each IT system or application has the concept of a user or “user account” object. The user account is what is used to control permissions within the application and for authentication. In EmpowerID, the user account object is known as the Person and is stored in the Person table. Anyone authenticating to use the EmpowerID application must have a Person object. All activities are centered around this Person object. For example: assigning roles, granting access, recertifying access, assessing risk, and reporting. Employees, partners, and customers can authenticate and use the EmpowerID applications with only a Person object even if they do not have any other user accounts.
As an Identity Management platform, one of EmpowerID’s primary use cases is to present an accurate picture of the security within each IT system in an organization's on-premise and Cloud landscape. In order to do this, EmpowerID periodically inventories and pulls in the user account objects from these “external” or “managed” systems into the Account table. From here on out we'll refer to them simply as Accounts in order to avoid confusion. Accounts are users from external systems and Person objects are the primary identity or user object for the EmpowerID system.
We mentioned above that a key use case is to present an accurate picture of the access assigned to Accounts across an organization’s IT systems and if it is compliant with risk policies. What makes access “compliant”? Compliant access is appropriate to the person to whom it is assigned in compliance with the organizational standards and business policies to minimize risk. The key here is that the appropriateness of access in IT systems is based on who they are, what role do they perform in the organization, and other related information considered the business context of the person. In order to have a holistic view and analysis of this information, a Person’s Accounts cannot be analyzed and managed In isolation but must be linked together and viewed as a whole unit. It is for this purpose and for the management of their lifecycle (creation, modification, deletion) that they are linked and owned by a single Person object.
What About Accounts That Aren’t People?
The first thing many of you might ask yourself is, “yes, HR Accounts are always human people but what about the downstream systems' technical or non-human accounts? Do I need a Person object for these?” The answer is not always clear-cut but rather a maybe or sometimes. You are not required to create a Person object for non-human accounts you wish you manage directly in EmpowerID (create, edit add/remove from groups, reset the password, disable, etc.)
Below is a list of common use cases for which you would want to create a Person object to own the non-human Account.
Deciding When You Need a Person Object
If the Account will login to use any of the EmpowerID applications, user interfaces, or REST APIs (e.g. PAM Application to Application, Bots, etc.)
If you would like to shop for access in the IT Shop for the Account
If the owner of the technical Account requires access to perform a self-service password reset for the password of the technical Account
If you would like to assign EmpowerID roles to the account so it receives policy-controlled access in downstream systems (e.g. group membership). Group membership can still be managed directly for Accounts without a Person object.
Handling Multiple Person Objects for the Same Person
Compliant Access Delivery synthesizes multiple Identity and Access Management (IAM) technologies with a business modeling approach to automate and maintain each user with their appropriate Access to IT systems while continuously minimizing risk.
Core Identity – single entity per human or IoT
Person — core identity can be the owner of other person objects
OrgRoIe — Business Role always assigned in conjunction with an Organizational Location
OrgZone — Organizational Location / Business Context always assigned in conjunction with a Business Role
Polyarchical RBAC — Business Roles and Locations are both hierarchical trees. People are assigned to one or more Business Roles each for a specific Location/Context. This polyarchy dramatically reduces the number of roles and eliminates role bloat
Company — people belong to companies via their Business Role and Location assignments
Personas — person core identity can be linked to multiple sub-person objects which are the professional identities — i.e. have the business information attached
AccountStore – represents a directory or user store
ProtectedApplicationResource – represents an application
Account – user or HR record in an external directory/application
Group – group or application role in an external directory/application
GroupAccount – membership of user records in groups in external directories/applications