Short and comprehensive: what IAM, IDM and DAG are all about

IAM, IDM and DAG – these abbreviations are certainly familiar to you if you are concerned with IT security, compliance and the allocation of authorisations and accesses within a company. But what do the terms mean exactly? What role do identities play? And what is user provisioning? We will give you a little insight.

Identity and Access Management (IAM) – What does it mean?

Managing the identities of employees and their access rights in the company is the task of identity and access management. IAM is one of the most important prerequisites for ensuring data compliance. Because: Basically, every person within a company is linked to a digital identity in order to make it traceable when, who (via different accounts) has access to which data, folders and systems. Accordingly, it is a system based on roles and rules.

However, managing this and keeping it permanently up to date is often a challenge – and the trend is increasing as the size of the company grows. To support the IT department in this complex process, you can use specialised software tools. These tools automate the allocation of identities and authorisations and also ensure a comprehensive overview of current situations through monitoring and reporting.

Identity Management (IDM) and Access Management (AM) considered individually?

Ein Mensch sitz vor drei Bildschirmen und tippt etwas auf der Tastatur

The abbreviation IDM stands for the first aspect of identity and access management. Specifically, IDM is the permanent control of the assigned digital identities – the who and where. Who has access to which systems with which accounts? And is the access authorisation currently (still) needed? The aim is to standardise and automate the administration of users and authorisations and, for example, the provision of IT services such as file services or mailboxes.

Access management, as the second aspect, is dedicated to execution – the how. How is it possible to grant access rights to authorised persons or groups? And who grants access rights? Access management also includes the possibility of applying for authorisations via self-service.

Which existing permissions can you remove? In practice, this decision is often difficult for those responsible. The result can be that permissions that are no longer needed are not removed because of the time-consuming distinction.

What is User Provisioning?

User provisioning is the provision of access for users. Ultimately, this means that users receive access according to their current digital identity. The difficulty in ensuring this lies with IT administration, because personnel and structural changes within an organisation require regular adjustments.

User Provisioning

Find out how user provisioning can succeed here.

Data Access Governance (DAG) – What is meant by this?

This term is also often used in connection with IAM: Data Access Governance – the management of data access. This includes the control and allocation of access rights to unstructured data, such as file servers or SharePoint. Compared to role-based, rather static rights (such as in identity management), data access governance requires dynamic and often short-term changes.

the idea
The goal is also to create uniform structures and guidelines for handling data in order to ensure data security and the company’s compliance. This goal – or rather this process – can only be achieved if the internal guidelines are continuously maintained and constantly monitored by designated persons.
the obstacle
A weakness in comparison to identity and access management: already existing access authorisations, i.e. the digital identity of users, are not centrally recorded and compared. This can lead to an accumulation of assigned authorisations that become obsolete, e.g. when a department changes, but still exist.

An automated solution for the administration of access rights in combination with a regular check of the existing rights provides a remedy and significantly relieves the IT department.

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Short and comprehensive: what IAM, IDM and DAG are all about

Identity and Access Management (IAM) – What does it mean?

Identity Management (IDM) and Access Management (AM) considered individually?

What is User Provisioning?

Data Access Governance (DAG) – What is meant by this?

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