Ping Identity Workforce Identity Governance

Short Summary

Integrating security into digital transformation is difficult but essential to ensure vulnerabilities and risks do not undermine innovation and the benefits of modernization. Security planning should start early and persist throughout the lifecycle of transformation initiatives. A foundational step is implementing Identity and Access Management (IAM), which provides the policies, processes, technologies, and practices to manage digital identities and control access so that the right people can appropriately reach systems, applications, data, and even physical locations.

Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) is positioned as a focused subset of IAM that governs identities, access rights, and administrative processes to reduce security risk, support regulatory compliance, streamline administration, and maintain enterprise-wide visibility into access across complex environments. Core IGA practices include lifecycle management, access provisioning and deprovisioning, request and approval workflows, certifications, role management, segregation of duties (SoD), and audit support. IGA is often introduced after IAM, becoming a final “leg” of security in transformation programs.

To improve efficiency and reduce error, IGA solutions should add analytics and automation, including AI/ML to generate insight into access patterns, compliance posture, and risks, and to automate complex tasks like joiner/mover/leaver provisioning and low-risk approvals or certifications. Organizations are also considering cloud and cloud-native security services to gain cost efficiency, scalability, agility, and innovation.

ForgeRock, founded in 2010, evolved from introducing a self-managed IGA product in 2019 to building a fully featured, cloud-native IGA offering hosted on Google Cloud Platform as part of the ForgeRock Identity Platform. Its Workforce Identity Governance combines governance, access management, machine learning, and automation; integrates with existing identity stores and third-party IAM; supports lifecycle management via automation and Remote Connector Server for on-premises provisioning; and delivers self-service access requests, AI-guided certifications with confidence scoring, SoD enforcement, and reporting powered by a data lake. Strengths include AI-driven automation, reporting, cloud-native scale, and ecosystem reach; challenges include SaaS-only delivery for the new solution, a basic UI, and lack of decentralized identity support.

Interesting Facts

• IAM is a framework of policies, processes, technologies, and practices used to manage and secure digital identities and control access to resources.
• IGA is a subset of IAM focused on governing user identities, access rights, and related administrative processes.
• Essential IGA components include identity lifecycle management, provisioning/deprovisioning, access request and approval, access certification, role management, segregation of duties, and audit and compliance.
• ForgeRock was founded in 2010 and is headquartered in San Francisco with offices worldwide.
• ForgeRock introduced its IGA offering in 2019 as a self-managed product.
• ForgeRock released its Autonomous Identity product in 2019, using analytics and AI/ML from a collaboration with the Accenture R&D center.
• ForgeRock’s fully featured IGA solution is cloud-native and hosted on Google Cloud Platform.
• ForgeRock provides Remote Connector Server (RCS) to support on-premises provisioning activities as a gateway to ForgeRock Identity Cloud.
• ForgeRock includes a 24/7 self-service access request portal with workflow templates and an access catalog.
• ForgeRock’s access certification uses AI to generate access recommendations and confidence scores.

Notable Quotes

• “Integrating security into a company's digital transformation process is often challenging for organizations.”
• “Ideally, IT security should be planned early on and maintained throughout the lifecycle of digital transformation initiatives.”
• “IAM ensures that the right individuals access systems, applications, data, and physical locations appropriately.”
• “IGA is particularly important in complex IT environments with diverse applications, systems, and user roles.”
• “IGA is sometimes considered later, after IAM implementation, and becomes the last leg of security for the digital transformation journey for organizations.”
• “Providing analytics capabilities to IGA can provide insights into access patterns, compliance status, and potential risks.”
• “Automation within IGA can help with access provisioning when new users join the organization and the deprovisioning process when users leave or change roles.”
• “Automating these processes can help minimize the risk of orphaned accounts and unauthorized or overprovisioned access.”
• “The ForgeRock Workforce Identity Governance offering is now part of the ForgeRock Identity Platform.”
• “ForgeRock provides users with a 24/7 self-service access request portal.”