Unifying Access Management with Pathlock

One of the most important aspects of a successful GRC strategy is cohesiveness. Organizations must have teams and technology that work in harmony to minimize risk while also ensuring that all users have the access that they need to execute essential business functions.

Yet all too often, companies work in a siloed manner, with differing levels of access and permissions allowing gaps in an enterprise’s overall GRC posture. This can come about when companies rely on the baseline systems included within their SAP environment, like SAP Access Control. This can leave visibility gaps when securing user access.

Meeting the Market

Many leading enterprises have chosen to take GRC into their own hands, adopting more specialized applications to use instead of SAP Access Control. To help companies better understand how to take these crucial steps, the GRC experts at Pathlock have highlighted five key aspects of a successful GRC strategy:

1. Seamless Integration Across Applications

When essential applications like Salesforce are siloed from SAP-centric access controls, organizations may struggle to manage access. Organizations should find solutions like Pathlock Cloud that integrate directly with SAP as well as other popular applications, providing a unified view of user access and risk.

2. Centralized Policy Enforcement

Having one cohesive strategy makes it easier for companies to uniformly enforce their required level of access. That way, companies can orchestrate policies so they address risk at both the application level and across applications, allowing them to better detect risk and mitigate any potential issues.

3. Streamlined User Provisioning and Lifecycle Management

Ensuring that a given solution can access HR information to better manage user lifecycles is one of the best ways for GRC teams to save time and stress. Finding a single source of truth ensures that users can be upgraded or removed while also preventing privilege creep, which Pathlock defines as “users retaining unnecessary access as they move across roles or teams.” This reinforces a zero-trust model by limiting users to only the access they need.

4. Preventative Risk Checks and Real-Time Access Governance

Though it may seem obvious, GRC applications should perform preventative risk checks prior to provisioning, identifying any potential risks before granting access to an application. Applications like Pathlock Cloud that perform proactive risk governance mitigate security issues at the point of access and helps organizations stay compliant by ensuring that only approved, risk-free access is granted. This automated risk analysis and mitigation feature is not available in SAP Access Control, making Pathlock Cloud a more secure and comprehensive option.

5. Unified Access Certification for Reduced Privilege Creep

Leading GRC teams consolidate usage data and access reports across all applications. This helps companies better understand which privileges are actively used and which can be safely revoked. This expedites the review process, helping revoke unnecessary privileges and mitigate exposure. This goes above and beyond traditional control systems like SAP Access Control.