It has been several weeks since RES joined the Ivanti family. It’s not hard to see how RES technology supports the Ivanti vision for unifying IT – especially when you consider the advanced identity management and automation capabilities that RES offers the enterprise.

Standalone identity governance initiatives are growing, as organizations look to secure and protect their data and systems. But Ivanti empowers organizations to improve effectiveness and security across all of their IT operations.

And it starts with identity.

Think about it. How can IT leaders manage IT ops and support users in a way that is secure, compliant, and cost effective, without understanding who they are and what their needs are? How can risks be mitigated without that granular understanding of who within the organization should be leveraging key systems and resources?

Identity management informs exactly who should (and should not) have access to what, and under what circumstances. Because of that, managing identities provides a guide to steer IT teams as they carry out their mission across an organization.

For starters, managing access rights based on identity and other key attributes inherently strengthens security operations. IT can ensure that identity is automatically being applied to access policies, providing a first line of defense from right within the organization’s walls. Identity management supports the principal of least privilege, and in cases of breach, your users won’t have bloated access rights, reducing the level of risk of key systems being compromised. Enforcement of these policies can also help teams that need to demonstrate compliance for regulatory purposes and audits. Worried about productivity? Exceptions can be handled easily through self-service for a user-friendly process that is still tracked and auditable.

Beyond security, service management teams can streamline their processes for delivering apps and services to users across their organization. Starting with the onboarding process, peoples’ needs can be predicted based on identity (including roles and other attributes), and then automated to get people productive quickly. Offboarding based on identity will help ensure that as soon as a person’s status within the organization changes, access to systems and apps is removed immediately and automatically.

There is also a cost benefit. Teams responsible for managing software licensing and hardware asset costs and compliance can apply identity to their strategy, further optimizing how resources are distributed across the organization. They can also automate the reclamation of licenses based on changes in identity – for example, when someone’s role within the organization changes or they leave apps, both on premises and SaaS, and infrastructure like virtual machines can be reclaimed. Licenses that go unclaimed can often result in unnecessary spend, or falling out of compliance with vendors’ licensing agreements. Tying into identity management eliminates that scenario.

The devices themselves that people use to get their jobs done – physical, virtual, and mobile platforms – can also be managed more purposefully when a user’s identity is considered. These endpoints and critical applications can be provisioned and configured more precisely, from day 1, based on identity. Assets can be allocated to people for specific periods of time or dedicated projects, reducing the long-term management overhead of endpoints and the attack vectors that present potential vulnerabilities. The scope of the software needing deployment and the ongoing management can be reduced, and IT can make smarter decisions about management.

To make it all come together, identity management is underpinned by automation. While identity attributes drive the policies that grant access, automation ensures that those policies are consistently applied, enforced, and governed. It allows for tracking and auditability. It connects systems that were once disparate. And, it relieves manual effort.

It’s a good time to ask yourself: as an IT operations leader, are you tuned into your organization’s identity management practices enough? Are you taking advantage of your organization’s identity and governance initiatives across your IT groups? If not, you’re not alone. Ivanti can help you navigate making IT operations more effective and secure.

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