Increasingly, companies are using external parties, such as temporary employees and freelancers. This happens when companies need extra manpower or specialist knowledge on a flexible basis. For these external parties to carry out their work, they often need access to certain company data and applications. HR can usually automatically arrange this for internal employees, but it is much more difficult for external identities. So we thought it would be useful in this blog to look at the three biggest challenges CISOs face when managing external identities and how to overcome them.

The three biggest challenges

IT and HR systems and processes are not specifically designed for external identities and their lifecycle status (joiner, mover, leaver). This creates various challenges when it comes to processing, registering and recording these personal data. We discuss the three biggest ones here:

1. Access rights & audits

The access rights of external identities are not always revoked (in time). In many cases, administrators do not carry out checks once an external identity has been added, and HR managers often have no idea when an external identity’s work is going to end. As a result, too many accounts and access rights remain current or open for too long. There is too little control and supervision, so these accounts and access rights are left unmanaged. This creates unnecessary security issues.

To ensure security and GDPR compliance, iD Veritas automatically and efficiently offboards external identities. Standard features such as a recertification process and extensive reporting capabilities not only put you firmly in control but enable you to demonstrate it too. Thanks to the security-by-design architecture and privacy-by-default functionality, you can safely manage the identity data of your external identities. As a result, you can demonstrate during an audit that you are doing everything in your power to comply with GDPR.

2. A lot of manual and ad hoc work

Onboarding and offboarding external identities often provide HR and IT managers with a lot of manual work and is time-consuming. What’s more, external identities are often made to switch between various activities. These movers need different roles, rights and access for these different activities. iD Veritas provides real-time processing of identity data of external identities in your IAM solution. That’s why iD Veritas can save organisations time and money, up to 70%.

3. Non-standard processes

Often, there is no standardised process in place yet to process data from external identities. Most systems are not designed for this. While these systems may be suitable for the processes of internal employees, which are fairly predictable, external identities are an entirely different matter. 

The lifecycle of an external identity is different to that of an internal identity. It is much more flexible. External parties sometimes start working on a fairly ad hoc basis, so it is not always clear when they will leave again. Not all processes can handle this equally well. For example, IT managers often lose track of accounts after they are created. iD Veritas allows the people responsible for the external employee (the manager, resourcing partner and/or the supplier) to check and change this information themselves. After which the access is automatically modified in the IAM solution.

iD Veritas also keeps track of who makes these requests or modifications. As a result, you make the ownership clear and ensure that the source of the access and/or identities can be traced. This can be very useful during a governance audit.

How does ID Veritas help?

iD Veritas enables you to carry out the onboarding and offboarding processes for external employees in an efficient, safe and controlled way. You are in firm control of the entire lifecycle of external identities. You can achieve this in 5 steps:

1. First set up all external identities in iD Veritas. Manually enter them, upload a CSV overview or connect to your supplier’s database (via an API).
2. You or your supplier can then use iD Veritas to manage the lifecycle status of the external identities. Changes are automatically relayed to your IAM solution, which revokes or modifies access and rights.
3. Now connect iD Veritas to your IAM solution. iD Veritas can be connected to any Identity and Access Management solution on the market. iD Veritas uses open standards (such as an API) to send and receive information to and from your IAM solution.
4. You have the option of outsourcing the data management of the external identities to your resourcing partners. This allows you to delegate administrative activities such as the entry, modification and deletion of external identities. All your organisation has to do after that is validate the information that was entered. Easy and efficient!
5. You retain control and oversight. The recertification process and the extensive reporting possibilities not only put you firmly in control but enable you to demonstrate it as well. This makes it a lot easier to comply with laws and regulations.

Contact

If you would like to learn more about managing external identities with iD Veritas, please contact us at 088-9982020 or sales@id-veritas.com. We look forward to hearing from you!