Security & Compliance

  • 6 min read

NetIQ Vs. SailPoint: Which IAM Tool To Opt For?

Rohit Rao

31st August, 2023

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NetIQ's IAM enables your IT teams to manage and govern digital identities and grants your employees the right level of access. Meanwhile, SailPoint's IAM enables your IT team to manage employee access permissions, information security, digital identities, and compliance. 

However, both IAM tools offer unique functionalities. You, as a CIO, can evaluate their core functionalities before making a decision on which IAM tool to choose.

To determine which IAM tool is best among NetIQ and SailPoint, it's crucial to thoroughly evaluate each tool's functionalities and assess how well it aligns with your IT team's requirements. 

To understand better, let's assume a scenario, a large company requires an IAM tool which focuses mainly on managing employees' identities and access control. So which one out of the two tools do you think will be more apt for this scenario, NetIQ or SailPoint?   

SailPoint can be a better choice in this scenario as it caters to large organizations and specifically aims to manage employee identities and access permissions. NetIQ is a better fit for small and mid-market and is an ideal option for organizations requiring a broader range of IT management capabilities beyond IAM. 

This was just an overview of how functionalities can bring a difference in your decision-making process. However, you cannot decide which tool to choose based solely on one functionality. You need to carefully consider each of their distinctive features to select the best one.

So, let's move on and compare both tools based on different parameters to help you decide which IAM will be the best choice.

NetIQ Vs. SailPoint: Comparison Based on Different Parameters

Below, we'll discuss each parameter in detail so that you, as a CIO, can make an informed decision about which tool will help your IT teams streamline the identity access management process. 

1. Solution Categories

• NetIQ identity manager has no unique categories. Furthermore, this tool is well-suited for both small and mid-market businesses ranging from 51 to 1000 employees. 

• On the other hand, SailPoint is categorized as self-service password reset (SSPR), identity and access management (IAM), and sensitive data discovery. Furthermore, this platform perfectly fits the enterprise segment with 1000 plus employees. 

2. Identity Access Management

• How NetIQ streamlines identity access management?

NetIQ offers your IT team a holistic view of employees' identity and access permissions, enabling them to gain valuable insights into which of your employees have access to high-risk/critical SaaS applications and data. Furthermore, with its IGA analytics and real-time response, your team can proactively identify and mitigate potential security breaches by detecting unauthorized access attempts and implementing preventive measures. 

Also, it streamlines the access request and approval process by providing your approvers with the necessary insights and recommendations to make informed access decisions. This simplification enhances your team's efficiency and accuracy in managing access privileges. 

Apart from that, NetIQ conducts periodic verifications of employee identities, ensuring that only authorized employees have access to the right applications during any transitional phases. By maintaining strict control over access rights, NetIQ offers an extra layer of security to safeguard your organization's sensitive information and resources. 

• How SailPoint streamlines identity access management?

Whereas, with SailPoint, your IT team can enhance your organization's security posture by ensuring the protection of every identity that has access to your SaaS apps and other critical assets. How does it do that? It automates the access management process, reducing back door access by former employees and unauthorized third-party. By promptly revoking access upon employee departures, SailPoint mitigates the potential for backdoor access and ensures that only current and authorized users can access your SaaS apps and data. 

Furthermore, it enforces the least privilege by using roles and policy logic. This approach grants your employees access only to the SaaS app and data required for their specific job functions, minimizing the risk of excessive access privileges and potential security breaches. So, by aligning access with job roles, SailPoint helps your team maintain a secure and well-governed access environment.  

Also, its monitoring capabilities easily detect unauthorized access attempts. By identifying such incidents, your IT team can take immediate preventive measures, such as suspending the accounts or revoking all access from unauthorized users.

Additionally, SailPoint enables your IT team to gain complete visibility and control potential access risks by conducting regular audits. These audits provide insights into access transitions, ensuring that the right level of access is granted or revoked during role change or any kind of transition. 

3. Manages Access Seamlessly Upon Provisioning/Deprovisioning

• With NetIQ, your IT team can effectively manage the entire identity lifecycle, streamlining processes such as account creation, entitlement management, and access revocation. How does it do all that?
  
  NetIQ automates provisioning and deprovisioning, reducing the risk of human errors. It simplifies the onboarding process by accurately assigning access permissions to new employees while also automating access revocation when employees depart from the organization. 
  
  Furthermore, with the identity data normalization engine, your team can seamlessly manage all identity stores within your organization. This centralized approach ensures consistent and efficient identity data management, reducing complexities and enhancing control.
  
  Also, NetIQ provides a single event engine that initiates and monitors all identity changes, ensuring centralized control and visibility. Further, it enables your IT team to overview all identity-related activities comprehensively. 
  
  It also offers a GUI form builder allowing your team to create and customize provisioning workflows, ensuring access requests are handled efficiently. 
  
  Meanwhile, SailPoint allows your IT team to seamlessly grant, modify or revoke access whenever an employee joins, changes roles or departs from your organization. How does it do that? Automating the onboarding and offboarding processes significantly enhances the efficiency of your IT team while improving employees' overall experience. This automation also safeguards against the potential risks of over-provisioning or unauthorized access by former employees.
  
  SailPoint further ensures the integrity of access permissions through periodic audits, actively monitoring and managing all access points. Doing so effectively mitigates potential security threats, such as unauthorized access attempts. 
  
  Additionally, it offers role-based provisioning policies, ensuring that your employees' access permissions align with their job descriptions and organizational hierarchies. This strategic approach minimizes the risk of unauthorized access by ex-employees and restricts current workers' access solely to what is necessary for their roles.

4. Integration Capabilities 

Both NetIQ and SailPoint seamlessly integrate with various security solutions. This integration enhances the overall effectiveness of identity access management by leveraging the capabilities of complementary security tools. Such as

• NetIQ integrates with eDirectory, Microsoft Active Directory, Novell GroupWise, SAP, Oracle, and Lotus Notes

• On the other hand, SailPoint integrates with Centrify and ProofID

After closely comparing NetIQ and SailPoint, you have now gained an understanding of which tool will be a perfect fit for your IT team’s requirements. However, it’s important to consider that other platforms are also available. One such exceptional platform is Zluri, which offers exquisite features that help your IT team streamline the identity access management process. 

So, let’s have a quick look at how Zluri is a better substitute for NetIQ and SailPoint. 

Zluri: All-In-One Solution To Seamlessly Manage User Identity Access

If you are searching for a perfect solution to address the access management challenges your IT teams face, Zluri is your one-stop solution. What sets Zluri apart? With Zluri, your IT admins can effectively and securely grant the right employees the right access permissions to required SaaS apps and data at the right time. Also, it allows them to modify and revoke access upon an employee's role change and departure. 

With Zluri, your IT admin can access a centralized platform that effectively manages user identities and access policies, controls authentication and authorization procedures, and proactively tracks user behavior and compliance.

To show the benefits further, let's assume a scenario where a new employee joins your organization. Zluri securely binds the employee's data with their digital identity, ensuring that during the provisioning process, your IT admins can seamlessly verify the employee's identity and assign them the right level of access permissions for SaaS apps and data. This streamlined onboarding process not only enhances efficiency but also acts as a protective measure against identity theft, safeguarding your organization's critical SaaS app data from security breaches.

In addition to these advantages, Zluri offers advanced capabilities such as single sign-on (SSO) and multi-factor authentication (MFA). These features empower your employees to authenticate themselves seamlessly using a single set of credentials and a single click. This streamlined authentication process reduces password fatigue and enhances user experience by eliminating the need for multiple passwords. So, your employees can effortlessly access necessary applications without any hassle.

Your team also needs to monitor the entire access management process, which can be challenging, but not with Zluri. Your team can monitor each employee's access activities and permission levels from a centralized dashboard. This comprehensive overview includes insights such as the applications the employee has access to, login and logout attempts, and the level of permissions assigned to them. Such visibility enables your IT team to detect suspicious activities like unauthorized access attempts, allowing them to take immediate action or implement security measures to safeguard sensitive app data from breaches or cyberattacks.

Zluri doesn’t stop here; it enables your IT admins to securely and efficiently grant, modify, and revoke access. By integrating with the HR system, Zluri fetches employee data and updates it in its dashboard. This empowers admins to verify employees' identities seamlessly during onboarding, mid-life cycle changes, and offboarding.

Additionally, Zluri conducts periodic audits and generates reports on employee and application activity, including login and logout events, group creation, and changes to user profiles. It also generates security event reports, such as failed and suspicious login attempts and changes to security policies. These reports assist your IT team in proactively preventing security breaches.

So why wait? Book a demo now and see for yourself how it enables your IT team to streamline identity access management. 

About the author

Rohit Rao

Rohit works in the Community and Marketing Team of Zluri and is a strong advocate of community led growth.