IGA Solutions Compared: How to Choose the Best Solution!

Faced with growing threats, compliance challenges and mounting complexity, organizations of all sizes need Identity Governance & Administration to ensure safe and appropriate access for thousands of users across dozens of apps. But with countless of providers on the market, how do you choose the right IGA solution for your business? Read on to learn about the strengths and weaknesses of different IGA platforms.

What Is Identity Governance & Administration?

Identity Governance & Administration (IGA) ensures that the right people have access to the right resources across your entire IT environment. It covers key governance processes such as user lifecycle management, user access reviews, access requests and approval workflows. IGA is one field within the larger domain of Identity & Access Management (IAM), which can be divided into five main areas:

  • Identity Governance & Administration (IGA): User Lifecycle Management, Role-based Access, Privilege Audits, Access Requests, Approval Workflows

  • Identity Providers (IdP): Multi-Factor Authentication, Single Sign-On, Conditional Access

  • Privileged Access Management (PAM): Credential Vaults, Session Monitoring, Real-time Alerts

  • Customer Identity & Access Management (CIAM): User Registration, Seamless Login Experiences, Consent & Preference Management

  • Data Access Governance (DAG): Centralized Permission Reporting, Object-Level Visibility, Change Tracking, Audit Trails

Most solutions specialize in one area, though some combine features from two or more areas in one product. For example, tenfold combines Identity Governance & Administration with Data Access Governance, allowing you to manage both high-level and object-level access through a single platform.

However, even within one category there can be significant differences both in terms of which features a solution includes and how robust their implementation is. This makes it essential to evaluate potential solutions carefully and determine whether listed features actually perform to your expectations.

Which Features Do IGA Solutions Offer?

Identity Governance & Administration provides organizations with the tools they need to streamline and automate key governance processes, such as onboarding new users, reviewing privileges and updating access as requirements change. The goal of an IGA solution is to ensure appropriate access for every user while minimizing administrative overhead. To achieve this goal, IGA solutions rely on features such as:

  • Role-based Access Control (RBAC): Set the intended access for different roles within the organization, such as members of specific departments. Smart assistants analyze existing access to help you build roles.

  • Account Provisioning: Automatically create accounts for new users providing them with the right level of access based on their role.

  • Lifecycle Management: Dynamically update and revoke access as users join, move through and leave your organization.

  • Access Requests: Allow end users to request additional access when needed through a self-service portal.

  • Approval Workflows: Create custom workflows and designate data owners to approve or reject access requests, delegating decisions about access from the IT team to stakeholders within departments.

  • User Access Reviews: Create and conduct privilege audits, prompting data owners to review requests they have granted and revoke access if it is no longer required.

  • Segregation of Duties (SoD): Prevent users from simultaneously holding privileges that would allow them to circumvent independent controls.

Which Challenges Do Organizations Face Without IGA?

Identity Governance & Administration is an essential part of any identity security strategy. Without effective governance, organizations face enormous risk due to stale accounts, outdated access and overprivileged users. This leaves sensitive data exposed to dangers such as data leaks, insider threats and compromised accounts.

At the same time, inefficient administration wastes countless hours every year. Manual onboarding blocks helpdesk resources and delays your staff from getting to work. Keeping user identities in sync across different systems becomes a repetitive chore. And unmanaged access requests lead to a flood of emails and tickets.

In summary, there are three main challenges that IGA allows you to solve:

  • Manual governance is incredibly time-consuming. Onboarding, lifecycle management and access requests cost your IT team thousands of hours each year.

  • Despite this, manual governance leads to huge access risks resulting from stale accounts, outdated access and overprivileged users.

  • Without effective governance, it is impossible to stay compliant with internal, national and international regulations for privacy and data security.

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IGA Solutions Compared

Dive deep into the advantages and disadvantages of different available solutions for Identity Governance & Administration.

IGA Comparison

Legacy IGA: Heavy & Complex

Legacy IGA solutions were among the first to offer centralized access governance for professional IT environments. Designed to serve the needs of huge corporations, these solutions were built to be infinitely adaptable and scalable. Through custom-coded integrations and workflows, Legacy IGA can incorporate virtually any use case or application.

But this flexibility comes at a cost: Since it relies so heavily on custom scripting, it takes a lot of time and effort to turn Legacy IGA into a functional platform. Setup phases lasting multiple years are not uncommon. In fact, many deployments end up unfinished or in distress due to the strain on internal resources and consulting budgets. Even once they are operational, the level of customization in these projects makes maintenance and later changes a huge headache.

Advantages

  • Deeply customizable

  • Large feature set

Disadvantages

  • Requires heavy customization

  • Long setup times

  • Challenging to maintain and operate

Verdict: Faced with growing threats and increasingly complex IT environments, IGA has gone from an enterprise-level concern to a universal need. Legacy solutions, however, have not adapted to serve this growing market.

Long setups and high operational demands make Legacy IGA a poor choice for anyone working with limited resources or needing quick results. Legacy IGA still has its place in complex and sprawling environments that require endless customization. However, most orgs are better served by a leaner and more efficient solution.

Light IGA: Pared-Down Features

Recognizing the need for robust Identity Governance & Administration, even tools where IGA is not the main focus have started to add limited governance features such as support for user lifecycles, permission roles or access reviews. The term Light IGA has emerged to contrast these built-in capabilities against full-scale IGA solutions.

In theory, the idea of adding IGA features to a platform you already use has a lot of appeal. You skip the setup phase, work from a familiar UI and keep your tech stack small. The problem is that built-in IGA features simply cannot replace a dedicated governance platform.

Compared to a full-scale solution, Light IGA has severe limitations: missing integrations, no support for advanced workflows, no fine-grained control over entitlements. These are essential features that take IGA from a partial fix to full automation and in-depth governance.

Advantages

  • Familiar platform and UI

  • No additional setup

Disadvantages

  • IGA is not product focus

  • Missing features and integrations

  • No support for advanced workflows

Verdict: Despite its limitations, Light IGA can be a helpful tool for organizations that already use the platform offering these built-in features. You simply have to be aware that what you get with Light IGA is a pared-down version of a full-scale solution โ€“ allowing you to manage group memberships and run simple provisioning workflows, but not much else.

Data Governance: Narrow Focus, Limited Impact

The term Data Governance describes a variety of smaller-scale solutions that can handle tasks like account provisioning or permission reporting. Data Governance solutions are often focused on a single IT system, such as Active Directory or Microsoft 365 governance tools. This small scope tends to make them inexpensive and easy to deploy, but limits what they can deliver for your organization.

Data Governance solutions can help to fill in gaps left by first-party tools. The problem is that they offer just one piece of the larger puzzle. Their limited features do not meaningfully reduce workloads or improve security. One tool might streamline audits, but allow unwanted access to pile up between audits without lifecycle automation. Another tool might have the opposite problem. Without a comprehensive approach to governance, these tools often just move existing problems to a new interface.

Advantages

  • Quick to implement

  • Easy to use

Disadvantages

  • Small scale

  • Limited impact

  • Poor price to value

Verdict: While Data Governance solutions correctly identify governance challenges in todayโ€™s IT environments, their approach is too narrow to effectively address these problems.

By limiting themselves to specific issues or IT systems, they cannot offer solutions that meaningfully reduce governance workloads or guarantee appropriate access across all IT systems. Even at a lower cost, this makes Data Governance tools a poor value proposition compared to full-scale IGA solutions.

Modern IGA: Powerful, Lean & Efficient

Modern IGA solutions like tenfold set out to answer one question: How can you provide comprehensive governance without the lengthy setup and high operational demands of legacy solutions?

Between rising cybercrime, growing regulatory demands and the increasing shift to cloud and SaaS platforms, organizations of all sizes depend on IGA to control access and protect critical data. But most IT departments simply do not have the resources to devote multiple team members and months of effort to a legacy deployment, not to mention the ongoing cost of maintenance.

The key to providing effective governance quickly is out-of-the-box integration. With prebuilt plugins and workflows, you can connect apps in minutes instead of months. Aside from rapid deployment, this also streamlines later changes. tenfold can be fully configured through its no-code UI, allowing a single admin to manage the platform next to their existing duties. And if the need arises, custom scripting is still supported.

This makes Modern IGA a fast and cost-effective alternative to legacy solutions, providing the same powerful governance toolset.

Advantages

  • Faster time to value

  • Comprehensive governance

  • Minimal overhead

Disadvantages

  • Flexible within reason

  • Lower total feature set

Verdict: With their quick deployment and streamlined operation, modern IGA solutions like tenfold allow orgs of all sizes to quickly regain control of IT privileges. From lifecycle management to approval workflows, in-depth reporting and privilege audits, modern IGA offers a convenient, all-in-one solution for governing access.

While scenarios exist where the endless customization of legacy products can be an advantage, most organizations are best served by this faster and easier option.

tenfold: Identity Governance with Faster Time to Value

If you’re looking for a comprehensive IGA solution that goes beyond the limited capabilities of Data Governance and IdP products, but avoids the ballooning costs and setup times of Legacy IGA, then tenfold is the perfect choice for your organization!

Thanks to its no-code configuration and off-the-shelf plugins, tenfold is ready to go in as little as two weeks. This quick and easy deployment means you benefit from automated provisioning, reporting and access reviews while others are still stuck in meetings discussing their implementation timeline.

Don’t waste your time and money on endless setups! Discover tenfold today and speed up your IGA strategy โ€“ sign up for personal demo or free trial to learn more.

Govern Identities & Data Access With Ease: Learn How tenfold Can Help

About the Author: Joe Kรถller

Joe Kรถller is tenfoldโ€™s Content Manager and responsible for the IAM Blog, where he dives deep into all things Identity & Access Governance. With the help of tenfoldโ€™s experienced team of IAM developers, Joe creates helpful and well-researched articles highlighting the security and productivity benefits of IAM. From hands-on guides to compliance breakdowns, his goal is to make complex topics approachable for all.