Access Management
• 9 min read
6 Crucial Identity And Access Management Metrics
28th December, 2023
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Identity and access management is an essential cybersecurity strategy. It acts like a gatekeeper, ensuring only the right users access the organization's resources at the right time for a valid purpose. But how do you know if your IAM system is working effectively?
Well, in this article, we'll explore some key identity and access management metrics. Evaluating these metrics will help you measure your IAM system's effectiveness. If required, you, as an IT manager, can even take necessary actions to improve the IAM performance.
Before we dive into details, let's first understand what identity and access management metrics is.
What Is Identity And Access Management Metrics?
Identity and access management metrics are means of measuring IAM system performance. These metrics are taken into account to keep track of and understand the effectiveness of the IAM systems.
Not only that, these metrics also help in identifying potential areas for improvement. However, it's important to note that just knowing the area of improvement isn't enough. Your team needs to dig deeper to figure out how to fix the root cause.
For example: Company X's IT managers started tracking IAM metrics. They noticed that granting new employees access to necessary SaaS apps was consuming quite a time. So, by analyzing this metric, they easily pinpointed the bottlenecks in the IT process.
Now, by gathering this data, they further restructured their access-granting procedures, streamlined approvals, and implemented automation where possible. As a result, they significantly reduced the onboarding time, making the process more efficient.
Now that you've gained a brief understanding of identity and access management metrics, let's proceed further and learn about different key metrics.
6 Key Identity Access Management Metrics
Listed below are some of the key identity and access management metrics that you can use to measure your organization's IAM system effectiveness.
1. Authentication Success Rate
One fundamental and crucial identity and access management metric is the authentication success rate. This metric measures how frequently users can log in to your system without any hitches, problems, or delays.
A high authentication success rate signifies that your IAM system is secure, reliable, and user-friendly.
However, a low authentication success rate indicates some issues with your IAM system, such as malfunctioning components, outdated technology, or potential vulnerabilities to cyber threats.
But how to calculate the authentication success rate? All you need to do is divide the number of successful logins by the total number of login attempts during a specific time frame.
Let's take an example to help you understand better. An organization uses an IAM system to manage 1,000 employees accessing SaaS apps. Over the course of a week, they recorded a total of 1,000 login attempts by employees.
Out of those attempts, 980 were successful logins, and only 20 login attempts failed or showed an error.
So, to calculate the authentication success rate, your IT team would divide the number of successful logins (980) by the total login attempts (1000).
Therefore, authentication Success Rate = (980 / 1000) = 98%
In this hypothetical case, the organization has an impressive authentication success rate of 98%. This indicates that their IAM system is performing well, providing a smooth and secure login experience for their employees.
2. Authorization Failure Rate
Another important identity and access management metric is the authorization failure rate. This metric tracks how frequently users' access is denied that they are not authorized to access certain apps.
A low authorization failure rate is a positive sign, indicating that your IAM system is following the 'principle of least privilege.' In simple terms, it means that users only have the minimum access they need to do their job, which is a security best practice.
Whereas a high authorization failure rate depicts that your IAM system might be granting excessive or inappropriate access to users. This can increase the risk of security issues, like data breaches, fraud, or misuse of resources.
But how to calculate the authorization failure rate? You simply need to divide the number of times someone is denied access (authorization failures) by the total number of times access is requested (authorization requests) during a specific period.
For example: In company A, employees raised 400 app access requests. Out of these 400 app access requests, the IAM system denied access 20 times. Because some of the employees requested access to apps that were not required for their roles and responsibilities.
Now, to calculate the authorization failure rate, divide the number of authorization failures (20) by the total number of authorization requests (400).
Therefore, authorization Failure Rate = (20 / 400) = 5%
In this hypothetical scenario, company A has an authorization failure rate of 6%. This depicts that their IAM system is working well and has enforced the principle of least privilege effectively.
3. Identity Lifecycle Management Efficiency
The third important identity and access management metric focuses on identity lifecycle management efficiency. This metric evaluates how well your IAM system can create, modify/adjust, and delete user identities and their access rights in response to changes within your organization.
A high identity lifecycle management efficiency suggests that your IAM system is flexible, scalable, and automated. It can quickly adapt to the evolving needs of your organization, ensuring that users have the right access at the right time.
On the other hand, a low identity lifecycle management efficiency indicates that your IAM system is inflexible, reliant on manual processes, or outdated.
But how to calculate the identity lifecycle management efficiency? Well, you need to divide the number of identity lifecycle events, such as onboarding, offboarding, or managing role changes, by the time and resources it takes to complete these events within a specified period.
For example, Company AB's IT team manually onboarding and offboarding employees. When a new employee joins, it takes several days to grant them access to the required apps. And when an employee leaves, it can take a significant amount of time to revoke their access.
This low efficiency suggests their IAM system is inflexible, causing delays in managing privileged user identities and access rights.
4. IAM Audit Compliance Rate
The fourth crucial identity and access management metric is the audit compliance rate. This metric measures how frequently your IAM system adheres to the standards and requirements outlined in internal and external audits.
A high IAM audit compliance rate signifies that your IAM system consistently meets the best practices and regulatory standards relevant to your industry and jurisdiction. It demonstrates that your system operates in a manner that is secure, trustworthy, and in line with established rules.
Meanwhile, a low IAM audit compliance rate may indicate non-compliance, inconsistency, or potential risks associated with your IAM system.
How to calculate the IAM audit compliance rate? Simply divide the number of audit findings or violations discovered during an audit by the total number of audit criteria or controls that were evaluated in a specific period.
5. IAM User Satisfaction Score
The fifth identity and access management metric to consider is the user satisfaction score. This metric assesses the quality of your user experience or, in simple terms, how satisfied they are with your IAM system.
A high IAM user satisfaction score demonstrates that your IAM system is user-friendly, efficient, and meets your users' needs. It suggests that users find the system easy to navigate, convenient to use, and responsive to their requests.
On the other hand, a low IAM user satisfaction score depicts that your IAM system is complicated, cumbersome, or frustrating for users to use. This could potentially lead to dissatisfaction.
How to determine the IAM user satisfaction score? You can collect and analyze user feedback through surveys, feedback forms, or ratings. This data helps you understand their opinions and preferences regarding your IAM system during a specific period.
6. IAM Security Incident Rate
Lastly, the sixth critical identity and access management metric is the security incident rate. This metric tracks how often your IAM system is affected by security incidents, such as breaches, cyberattacks, or data compromises. Furthermore, this key metric helps you understand the security posture of your IAM system and its susceptibility to threats.
A low IAM security incident rate suggests your IAM system is strong, resilient, and secure. It indicates that your system effectively safeguards your organization's sensitive data and access environment.
A high IAM security incident rate portrays vulnerabilities or weaknesses within your IAM system, making it an attractive target for attackers.
How to calculate the IAM security incident rate? Well, you can simply divide the number of security incidents involving your IAM system by the total number of security incidents that occurred within a specific period.
For example, an organization has a high IAM Security Incident Rate of 20%. In this hypothetical case, out of 100 attempted security breaches, 20 were successful. This indicates that this organization's IAM system is not as strong and more susceptible to security threats. Therefore, the high rate suggests that hackers/unauthorized users find it relatively easy to breach their security measures.
These identity management metrics highlight how well your existing IAM system is functioning. However, if your current IAM solution falls short of expectations, you can always consider opting for a substitute identity and access management tool. Moreover, there are ample platforms available in the market that are designed to address your organization's IAM needs.
One such exceptional solution is Zluri. What is Zluri? What features does it offer to streamline your identity and access management processes? Here's a quick read-through.
How Does Zluri Help Positively Meet IAM Key Metrics?
Zluri’s access management is a modern automated solution designed to simplify and streamline identity and access management processes, such as onboarding, offboarding, access approval, reviews, and more. Furthermore, with the help of Zluri’s access management advanced features, your IT team can effectively control, manage, and govern the organization’s access environment.
Additionally, this platform addresses one of the major concerns of many organizations, i.e., data security and compliance. How does it do that? Well, it ensures that your IT team grants only the right employees the right access to the right SaaS apps at the required time. It does all this while adhering to stringent industrial and governmental compliance regulations.
However, this was just a glimpse of what Zluri’s access management is capable of, there is yet to explore more. So, let’s take a look at Zluri’s exquisite capabilities:
Maintains High Authentication Success Rate By Verifying Each User Before Granting Them Access
Upon new employees onboarding, Zluri’s access management links the employee's data/role with digital identity. This helps your IT teams cross-verify/authenticate each individual's identity before granting them required access to applications and data.
This secure authentication approach demonstrates that Zluri’s access management is a perfect solution for meeting high authentication success rates.
For example, Mark was hired as an accountant for company A. So, Zluri ties his data with his digital identity. Further, the IT team can authenticate his identity seamlessly and securely grant him access to systems, apps, and data required for his role as an account.
This allows employees to start their work from day one without any delay or interruption while ensuring they can access only what’s necessary for their designated role.
Increases ULM Efficiency By Automating Onboarding & Offboarding Process
Zluri automates onboarding and offboarding processes, eliminating the need for manual intervention and thus increasing lifecycle management efficiency. How does it do that? It allows your IT team to create onboarding and offboarding workflows. These workflows help your team grant multiple employees access to required applications with just a few clicks.
Similarly, upon offboarding, they can securely revoke access from departing employees, leaving no room for oversight or missing out on critical steps.
By automating this process, the IT team saves their productive time and efforts, which can be unutilized in other core activities. It also helps organizations significantly save costs and resources that would otherwise be invested in manual methods/processes.
Meets High User Satisfaction Score By Offering Employee App Store
Zluri’s access management ensures that your employees have the convenience to request for required app access when needed. So, to provide this ease to your employees, it offers an employee app store, a self-serve model. This app store is a collection of SaaS applications that are already present in the organization and are pre-approved by the IT teams.
So if your employee is going through mid-life cycle changes, be it promotion, department change, or geo shift, or just needs access to a new app for project completion. They can simply access EAS and submit or raise a request for the app they require.
Further, the request will go through a few verification processes, and then, within no time, the IT team grants your employee access to the requested app.
Also, to maintain full transparency of the process, your employees can check the access request, whether it is pending, completed, or failed. Also, if any changes are made in the request by the IT team, your employee can view it in "change logs."
So, in short, with the help of EAS, your employees can quickly request for app access whenever they need it and gain access to it in a short time. Thus, they can continue with their work without any interruption, improving their overall user experience. This way, your IT team can increase user satisfaction score.
Decreases The Authorization Failure Rate By Restricting Unauthorized Access
With Zluri’s access management, your IT team gets real-time alerts when users attempt to access critical apps or apps they are not authorized to access. This immediate notification allows your team to proactively respond by either restricting users' access to these applications or suspending their accounts. By doing so, your team can further minimize the possibility of security breaches. This way, Zluri’s access management decreases the authorization failure rate.
Minimizes Security Incident Rate By Thoroughly Monitoring The Access Environment
Zluri’s access management thoroughly monitors the organization’s access environment. It keeps track of who has access to what and checks if anyone has more access permissions than they need. Also, this helps in quickly detecting incidents or areas which can cause security breaches.
If it finds any issues or violations, your IT team can promptly change the user's access permissions, ensuring only the right users have the right level of access.
This way, your IT team can prevent/minimize security incidents/risks that may occur from employees holding excessive access rights.
Maintains High Audit Compliance Rate By Conducting Regular Audits
Several compliance regulations, like HIPAA, PCI DSS, GDPR, and more, compels organizations to demonstrate their commitment to safeguarding sensitive data.
So, to show auditors the evidence that regulatory compliance is adhered to, Zluri conducts periodic audits and generates reports or audit trails. These audit logs/reports serve as documented evidence of compliance being met.
It shows each employee has the necessary level of access to the organization's resources. Also, if there's any misalignment in their access, you can show that your IT team and reviewers have taken the necessary actions.
Like running deprovisioning playbooks or modifying access playbooks to revoke access from the users that are not required or modify the access to the right level.
Now that you know what Zluri is capable of. Why wait any longer? Book a demo now and see for yourself how it practically works.
Also Read: How IT Teams Can Improve Employee Experience in Their Organization
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