4.4 Reviewing access privileges (Reviewer’s experience)

Access to digital assets must be reviewed to ensure that only people who actually need access, get access. This greatly decreases the asset’s vulnerability to attacks and abuse. Industrial and government standards and regulations require periodic reviews of privileged or sensitive access to help you stay secure.

Note: Access privileges are the specific actions you can perform on the asset (such as edit, copy, delete).
             Assets can be files, folders, databases, drives or applications.

You've got mail!

If you got an email (or Slack message) like the one below, you are required to complete an access review.

Access review workflow

The reviewer’s access review process looks like this:

Click the here button in the message to launch the review.

Logging into Authomize

In some organizations the summary page will open automatically and ask you to log in. In others, you will need to register first before you can log in (for more information see the SSO section below). 

Once you’ve logged in, an access review summary page opens. To start the review process,
click .

Verify access privileges

When starting an access review, a review dialog opens to show you:

       an Access list (of assets, roles and groups) whose users you are asked to confirm
            or a list of Team members whose access privileges you need to confirm
            Note:  These are different views of the same list. You can toggle between Users and Access
                        from the summary page ().

       you can pick an entry from the list or review them sequentially
            the entry under review is listed up top, along with the type of entity it is

      in the case of an Access list, pane 3 lists the people who currently have access
           in the case of a Team members list, pane 3 lists what each member can access

       an additional context pane opens when > or + Add Justification is clicked

Go through the entire list (be it Access or Team members) until you have reviewed all the entries on the right (in pane 3). Note that the type of privilege the team member has on each asset is listed in the privilege column.

Click Keep or Revoke for each entry. You can explain your decision by clicking + Add Justification. You can change your decision until you click Save or Continue or leave.

Note: You can go back and change your Keep/Revoke decision, until submitting your review.

Click  to jump to the next review. If you leave in the middle, the review restarts where you left off (and nothing is lost). When you have completed the review (“Your progress” is 100%), click .

Multiple justification

The access review process can potentially be tedious and repetitive, costing the company resources and fatiguing the reviewers. This is where automation and intuitive user experience come in.

Reviewers can provide multiple-entitlements with the same justification, which can be useful if entitlements can be grouped in some way and all deserve the same explanation.

To do this, hit Keep All or Revoke All:

When you do this, a new pop-up appears, asking if you are sure and asking you to provide a justification:

Type anything and click Submit. You’ll see all of the entitlements got updated with the decision and with the justification. You can now edit any justification by clicking View Justification next to the entitlement.

Nudges and Escalation

The review request email has a completion date. If you do not make timely progress, Authomize will automatically send you a “nudge”:

If you do not complete it on time, Authomize may be used to escalate or assign the review to someone else.

Reviewer Context

Reviewers need to be able to make educated decisions during an access review. This is important to ensure least privilege: stale, redundant accesses are removed while accesses needed for work is kept. It is also important to ensure no rubber stamping is taking place (rubber stamping is the practice of approving access automatically without proper consideration).

To this end, Authomize is provides a Context Panel feature with much more information about reviewed entitlements.

During the review experience, click on any entitlement on the left side of the table:

The context Quick View panel opens on the right, with all the information Authomize has on the entitlement:

1. Authomize’s recommendation and reasoning.
2. The identity that accesses the asset, is a member of the group or can assume the role.
3. The asset or group they have access to.
4. The role and privileges they have over them.

You can make decisions right on the panel, or close it by clicking the x icon on the top right corner.

Note: In the near future, the last usage date will be displayed on the top left corner.

Background information

Access to apps, assets, groups and roles is granted to people in the organization so they can do their jobs. Most organizations use hundreds of apps across different business units and entities. With so many apps it is very easy to lose track of who has access to what, causing massive security risks. That is Authomize’s job: helping organizations stay least privileged in a complex landscape.

Authomize is used to set up Access review campaigns. Authomize finds the relationships between assets, identities and groups and sends access lists to reviewers for approval. Reviewers can be managers, asset owners or group owners. Access privileges that were revoked by reviewers are aggregated by the campaign owner and sent to the IT department for further action.

SSO (Single Sign-On)

If your organization has an SSO system in which Authomize is configured, you will automatically be transferred to your review.

If SSO is not configured, you’ll get Authomize login credentials in an email or Slack message. The first time you log into Authomize, change your password after entering the email and password provided.

Terms used in the entitlements dialog & elsewhere