Understanding Lifecycle Management and Regulatory Compliance

The importance of proper lifecycle management cannot be understated for IT teams today: this is the practice of giving the right users the right access to the tools and information they need. It begins on day one with their onboarding and provisioning, and continues throughout their lifetime at the company until they move on and their access is revoked.

For many teams, this process was once (or still is) manual, which is risky, burdensome to IT, HR, and department leads, and therefore time-consuming and costly. This challenge becomes exponentially larger for companies in healthcare, and those that work with government organizations — strict compliance regulations  such as NIST, HIPAA, or HITECH mean they are under constant scrutiny from regulators and subject to regular audits.

Regardless of which compliance regulation they must adhere to, there are consistent requirements across the board. One of the most important is having visibility into who has access to what information and strict access controls for sensitive data.

How Lifecycle Management Helps Regulated Companies Achieve Compliance

When new users number in the hundreds, provisioning can snowball out of control with frustrated users, time-strapped IT teams, and the risk that the wrong person gets control over the wrong information. Lifecycle management software streamlines compliance by providing visibility into and governance over what employees can and cannot do given the role and access level they have. 

This often changes throughout a user’s lifecycle within the company — different events (changing teams, promotions, adopting new apps, moving from a permanent to a contract position, hiring new partners) trigger different lifecycle state changes, requiring IT teams to ensure that each user’s access to resources stays compliant with security policies even as the access needs within the organization evolve. 

Okta’s Lifecycle Management integrates directly with HR software, so that when HR adds a new employee of record or changes a user’s position within the company, that user is automatically provisioned based on group rules that adhere to the organization’s security policies. Okta’s Universal Directory</