Complexity, risks, and compliance pressure
Imagine an organization with thousands of employees, each with access to dozens of applications and data. Who has which rights? Are former employees truly locked out? Can you prove that you comply with strict regulations like NIS2 or DORA?
In 2025, such questions are more urgent than ever due to the European NIS2 directive and DORA regulations. Failure to comply with these rules can lead to fines of up to 10 million euros or 2–5% of annual turnover. Ironically, 96% of organizations still rely largely on manual processes for their identity & access management (cerby.com). This is a recipe for errors, data breaches, and audit stress. And the figures do not lie: according to research, 52% of large organizations have already experienced a security incident traceable to manual identity workflows. In as many as 58% of cases, former employees still had access to critical systems after leaving (cerby.com).
What exactly is Identity Governance & Administration (IGA)?
Identity Governance & Administration (IGA) is a component of Identity & Access Management (IAM) that focuses on policy, oversight, and compliance, as well as administration—in other words, the lifecycle management of digital identities within an organization.
Simply put, IGA ensures that user accounts and roles can be managed across multiple platforms in a secure and controlled manner. Furthermore, it provides insight into and control over who has access to which resources, even when job functions or roles within the organization change.
An IGA solution involves managing the entire identity lifecycle and regulating access across the full breadth of enterprise systems, both on-premises and in cloud environments. IGA tools collect and correlate all identity and access data scattered throughout the organization, providing central control over user accounts and their rights. This means, for example, that an IGA system can automatically grant new employees the correct access upon hiring, update permissions during role changes, and immediately revoke accounts when someone leaves the company.
While general IAM focuses on authentication and authorization (logging in and granting access), IGA goes a step further by ensuring that the right people have the right access, with full visibility and adherence to rules. Identity Governance provides policies, roles, and controls (e.g., separation of duties), while Identity Administration focuses on the execution thereof (e.g., provisioning/deprovisioning, self-service access requests). IGA is therefore also referred to as identity security.
Concretely, IGA solutions offer features such as:
- Automatic provisioning & deprovisioning: creating new accounts and revoking them upon departure is automated based on HR events or workflows. This prevents forgotten “orphaned accounts” from remaining with potentially unauthorized access.
- Access reviews and certification: managers must periodically confirm the access rights of their team members. IGA simplifies this by automatically rolling out review campaigns and highlighting discrepancies.
- Role-based & attribute-based access control (RBAC/ABAC): IGA uses role models (RBAC) and contextual attributes (ABAC) to standardize access. Rights are granted based on job function, department, or other attributes, making “least privilege” enforcement easier. IGA also guards against separation of duties, preventing one person from holding two conflicting rights (to prevent fraud).
- Self-service and workflow: users can request access to additional systems via a portal; these requests go through defined approvers and are documented. This streamlines the process and reduces the need for manual IT intervention.
- Auditing & compliance reporting: every change in access rights, every approval, and every login attempt is logged. IGA generates audit-ready reports that demonstrate who gained or lost access when, and whether all procedures were followed. This is essential for compliance audits.
- Integrations with the security ecosystem: Modern IGA platforms connect with directories (such as Active Directory/Azure AD), HR systems, cloud applications (via API/SCIM), IT Service Management tools (e.g., ServiceNow or AutoTask), and even SIEM systems. This makes IGA an integral part of your entire security architecture.
In short, IGA is the central hub for identity management: it forms a policy-driven “single source of truth” for all accounts and rights within the organization.
Why is IGA crucial for large organizations?
For organizations with thousands of identities (employees, external partners, machine accounts), managing access is a massive challenge. Without a central governance system, a proliferation of rights and accounts emerges that is difficult to oversee, with all the associated risks. IGA is not a nice-to-have, but a must-have:
1. Compliance with laws and regulations (GDPR, NIS2, DORA)
Pressure from regulators is increasing in the area of identity & access management. For instance, the GDPR requires that access to personal data be limited to what is necessary (“need-to-know / least privilege”) and that every instance of access to sensitive data can be demonstrably justified. Newer laws go even further: the EU NIS2 directive applies from October 2024 to essential and important organizations in various sectors, requiring that “appropriate security measures” be taken and holding top management liable for negligence. Although NIS2 does not prescribe every detail, the focus is on areas such as access management, incident reporting, and continuity—precisely the domains where IGA plays a role.
For the financial sector, the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) came into effect in January 2025. DORA explicitly mandates that institutions implement strict identity & access management. For example, Article 28 requires that one has real-time insight into all user rights at all times and that regular access reviews are conducted to prevent privilege creep (rsa.com). In other words: you must be able to continuously demonstrate who has access to critical systems and whether that access is still appropriate. Strong authentication (MFA) must also be applied, and identity services must remain operational under all circumstances (rsa.com). Organizations that fail to comply risk heavy fines—DORA assumes enforcement with fines of up to 2% of global annual turnover, plus potential daily penalty payments until compliance is achieved.
An IGA system is virtually indispensable for meeting these compliance requirements. It automates the controls and administration that regulators demand. With IGA, you can demonstrate full traceability: who has which access rights, who approved them, and when those rights were last reviewed.
2. Managing identity risks & preventing data breaches
Beyond compliance, poor identity governance poses a direct security risk. Cyberattacks increasingly target vulnerabilities in identities: think of stolen passwords, phishing for admin accounts, or a former employee whose account was never deactivated. The Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report shows that stolen credentials play a role in 31% of data breaches. With IGA, you significantly reduce this risk by enforcing least privilege and quickly identifying suspicious access activity.
Without IGA, countless scenarios can go wrong: employees who have accumulated too many rights over time (privilege creep), “ghost accounts” or “orphaned accounts” belonging to users who have long since left, or sensitive systems where no one knows exactly who has access anymore. These are precisely the gaps that attackers slip through.
An effective IGA program addresses these risks through centralized visibility, automatic detection of policy violations, proper revocation of rights, and a reduction in human error.
3. Efficiency and cost savings
While security and compliance are the primary drivers, the efficiency aspect should not be underestimated—especially in large enterprises. Managing user rights manually is quite labor-intensive. Think of IT service desks resetting passwords daily, HR having to send tickets to various application managers for every new hire, and managers having to check off lists in Excel every quarter for an access review. The costs of this add up significantly.
Identity Governance & Administration automates repetitive tasks and streamlines processes. This delivers direct cost savings. Routine jobs such as creating accounts, assigning standard rights, resetting passwords, and performing access reviews can be up to 70% faster or cheaper. Moreover, end users can perform minor tasks themselves via self-service portals (e.g., requesting access or resetting a forgotten password), which lowers the pressure on help desks.
In addition, IGA tools provide insight through dashboards and reports, allowing you to make better-informed decisions. Efficient identity management is therefore not just an IT issue, but delivers direct organization-wide value. New employees are productive faster, staff retain access for less time when changing roles, and audits require fewer man-hours. In other words, IGA is a crucial investment that not only helps with security and compliance, but above all yields significant operational efficiency improvements and cost savings through the automation of manual and repetitive tasks in user management.
4. Integration into a Zero Trust strategy
More and more organizations are embracing Zero Trust as a security model, where no access is trusted by default—whether it comes from inside or outside the network. Identity is central to Zero Trust (“never trust, always verify”), which means you must be able to verify at any moment who someone is and whether that person is allowed to have that specific access. IGA forms the foundation to achieve this (aumatics.nl).
In a world of hybrid work, multi-cloud environments, and an increasing number of SaaS applications, the traditional network perimeter has disappeared. Identities are the new perimeter. IGA responds to this by providing consistent policy and insight for all identities, regardless of where the application runs (on-prem, cloud, or hybrid). It ensures that Zero Trust principles like least privilege and continuous verification become achievable in practice. For example: IGA can integrate with conditional access policies—if a device is not compliant or a login occurs from a foreign country, IGA can work with IAM to temporarily revoke access to sensitive applications or require additional verification. IGA also feeds your Security Operations Center with real-time data regarding identity via SIEM integration, so that anomalous behavior is immediately noticed.
Conclusion
In today's digital reality, where users work from everywhere and data is spread across cloud and on-prem systems, Identity Governance & Administration is the linchpin of security and compliance. Are you curious about what IGA looks like for your organization or would you like to discuss identity & access management in general? Schedule a no-obligation introductory meeting with an IGA expert from Aumatics. As an independent security partner, we provide honest advice on the best approach and tooling for your situation. This way, you lay a future-proof foundation for identity management, where you not only stay one step ahead of attackers but also face auditors with peace of mind.
