Describing SAP Identity and Access Governance

SAP Cloud Identity Access Governance is a leading platform that provides comprehensive security solutions for businesses. Designed to safeguard and streamline your operations, it is currently composed of five core components:

1. Access Analysis - conducts risk evaluations using predefined rules
2. Role Design - supports the creation and maintenance of business roles in your systems
3. Access Request - enables users to apply for access to applications in both On-Premise and cloud-based systems
4. Access Certification - reviews access
5. Privileged Access Management - logs consolidation and reviews with automated log assessment for fraud

Together, these five services create a robust system to manage user access effectively, helping you align IT operations with business objectives securely and efficiently.

This lesson delves deeper into the solutions provided through SAP Cloud Identity Access Governance.

The Access Analysis service is designed to provide real-time compliance analytics on risk and compliance-related activities. These services provide functionality similar to SAP Access Control but use a service delivery model. Key features and benefits:

• Delivers insight into segregation of duties (SoD) and critical access for On-Premise and cloud solutions.
• Built-in risk scoring.
• Provides configurable and predefined access policies and rules.
• Enables refinement of assignments to optimize user access for security and compliance.
• Allows management of controls, including integrated control monitoring and testing.
• Enables preconfigured audit reporting.

Access Analysis is a tool that checks how safe your organization's data is from different users or employees. You can use it at the level of the whole company or for individuals, and you can customize how it looks to make it easier to understand. It checks for risks using a specific set of rules. After running the test, it will show these risks, and then you can adjust who has access to what to limit them.

The total risk handling is shown in the Access Analysis Overview. For individuals, there's the User Access Analysis dashboard. Here, it shows the specific risks related to a particular user. It also tells you which risks have already happened and gives two scores to reflect how risky their access is.

The Access Compliance score tells you how many risks have not been handled for a particular user. On the other hand, the Access Effectiveness score tells you what access a user has and how they are using it. If a user has access to something but is not using it, this score decreases.

You can change user access within the User Access Analysis dashboard. For example, you can address any identified risks using the system's suggestions or remove access that is not necessary or appropriate. These changes are always recorded so that they can be checked later. All the required actions are then sent to the data-giving section. This means that the system makes it happen once you've decided what access a user can have.

SAP Cloud Identity Access Governance's innovative Role Design Service aids in creating, optimizing, and maintaining business roles extending to both On-Premise and cloud-based systems. This cohesive service offers an integrated approach, which promotes efficiency in designing and managing business roles.

A core strength lies in its ability to link access analysis results to the role design process. This feature exhibits pertinent risk data within the Business Role definitions. This information can then be assessed, ensuring alignment with corporate policies and accommodating user access requirements.

Significantly, SAP has incorporated machine learning into its role design services. The application uses SAP Fiori-based tools to support bottom-up business role designs facilitated by advanced machine-learning algorithms. This union enhances the effectiveness of role reengineering processes, optimizing business role design, and functionality.

Notably, the Role Design Service ensures consistent compliance of business roles with organizational policies. This is further augmented by an integrated reconciliation process established to maintain the consistency of business roles across various platforms.

The ability to seamlessly interlace access analysis and role design is valuable. This provides a systematic approach to governing access and managing roles. So, SAP Cloud Identity Access Governance's Role Design service is an advanced solution to facilitate effective and dynamic role management within your organization.

The Access Request Service is an essential tool that allows users to request access to applications necessary for their work. This applies to both systems on the organization's network, known as 'On-Premise', and those based on the internet, known as 'cloud-based' systems.

Users can submit their requests for system access using an easy, user-friendly access request interface. The screen interface is simple and intuitive, with built-in guides to assist through the process, and an advanced search and filtering capacity to streamline their request. It essentially makes the process quicker, more efficient, and user-friendly.

One of the Access Request Service's essential features is its ability to facilitate the provisioning and deprovisioning of approved access. Simply, it allows granting (provisioning), denying, or removing (deprovisioning) access to specific systems when a request is approved or denied. This feature adds a significant layer of security.

To ensure transparency and security, each access request maintains a detailed audit log. This audit log thoroughly records all actions and processes related to each access request, an essential feature for administrative review and maintaining accountability.

The key features and benefits of the Access Request Service can be boiled down to the following points:

1. Self-service access-request forms with built-in guides and data-driven filters: The system is user-centric, focusing on ease-of-use and efficiency.
2. Auditable access-request workflow: The system allows for audit trails, enabling accountability and providing a reliable record of activities.
3. Integrated, compliant user-provisioning process: This refers to the system's compliance with standard protocols, maintaining the security and efficiency of granting and denying access.
4. Integration with cloud apps: The system is adaptable, fully functional, and efficient with applications located on the cloud. This provides comprehensive benefits for organizations employing cloud computing.

SAP Cloud Identity Access Governance's access certification service is a cutting-edge cloud-based solution to enhance your data and access control operations. Whether operating on a local server network ('On-Premise') or leveraging internet-based ('cloud') systems, this service is designed to manage and streamline the periodic assessments and confirmation of access rights to your business applications.

The service provides an integrated strategy for designing and managing certification campaigns, offering an optimized process for conducting regular certification reviews for your network access. By harmonizing the certification process, the service ensures the efficiency of your operations by decreasing the complexity typically involved in such crucial processes.

The service efficiently certifies various roles, from single and composite roles to business roles and profiles. Even static groups within SAP SuccessFactors can benefit from this periodic review process.

One of the service's principal advantages is its ability to automatically conduct periodic access reviews. This automation significantly helps in efficient management and aligning access rights to an organization's changing needs and dynamics.

The service also allows bespoke reviews tailored to meet the distinct requirements of an organization. Irrespective of the scale, whether you're conducting a modest department-level review or orchestrating a large-scale companywide reassessment, the certification service is versatile enough to support it.

The service makes managing the review process more accessible. It provides a mechanism to track ongoing review processes and adjust workflows as and when necessary.

The service offers data-driven views of the review process for improved visibility and informed decision-making. This feature empowers you with insights derived from the data collected during access review processes, which enhances the efficiency and effectiveness of your access governance.

Privileged Access Management (PAM) is crucial in enforcing your company's standards for managing emergency access. It offers a practical approach to administering who is granted privileged or emergency access to your systems and applications.

With PAM, users can independently send requests for emergency access. This functionality allows for a prompt response in urgent situations, allowing work continuity without compromising security.

Moreover, PAM allows approvers, reviewers, and security personnel to review these emergency access requests. This collaborative approach ensures that any granted access aligns with the company's security protocols, enhancing oversight in critical access decisions.

Importantly, PAM empowers compliance personnel to conduct periodic audits of usage and logs. This ensures that the company's security policy examines system access on an ongoing basis, enabling regulatory compliance and mitigating potential risks.

The key features and benefits of the PAM include:

• Administration of privileged user accounts for On-Premise SAP Netweaver systems: This feature underscores the PAM's capability to manage key user accounts within your company's local network systems.
• Temporary use of elevated permissions: PAM provides a mechanism for granting short-term access with elevated permissions, addressing emergency needs carefully without causing potential lasting security risks.
• Integrated session tracking: PAM records all user sessions, providing a clear audit trail that can be traced back for any necessary reviews or investigations.
• Workflow-based activity review: By aligning activity reviews with specific workflows, PAM enables a structured process for monitoring and managing access rights, enhancing efficiency and oversight.
• Machine Learning (ML) based & Anomaly Detection: PAM applies advanced ML algorithms to analyze user behavior and identify anomalies. This intelligence layer helps detect possible threats or breaches, ensuring robust security.