SAP is one of the world’s leading producers of software for the management ofbusiness processes, developing solutions that facilitate effective data processing and information flow across organizations.
SAP software provides multiple business functions with a single view to the entire data. This helps companies better manage complex business processes by giving employees of different departments easy access to real-time insights across the enterprise.
SAP solutions are classified into 6 core products as listed below.
SAP ECC is the ERP system that integrates information from one SAP system to another system in real time, this helps companies better manage complex business processes by giving employees of different departments easy access to real-time insights across the enterprise.
As a result, businesses can accelerate workflows, improve operational efficiency and raise productivity.
Separation of Duties: Whenever user request for conflicting access SoD policy violation check will happen and warn the approver that approving access will violate SoD policy.
Leaver Scenario:When user lifecycle state is changed to terminated the end target applications access will be disabled.
Certification campaign:To certify user is having right access certification campaign can be configured and can be certified by user’s manager or source owner or a specific individual.
In the below video, we are going to look at a demo of above specified integrations and use cases.
IdentityNow has many even triggers which capture the events internal to IdentityNow. This can be related to various IdentityNow internal processes like aggregation, provisioning, access request etc.
In response or action to an event, Event triggers have a capability to communicate with external applications. This response can happen via webhooks or AWS event bridge.
This type of trigger is used to give the custom application an ability to answer back to a trigger event sent by the trigger service. This integration is bi-directional. A response from the custom application is required for a trigger invocation to be considered complete and successful.
FIRE_AND_FORGET
This type of trigger is used to notify the custom application of a particular occurrence of an event. This integration is uni-directional. Trigger invocation is successful the moment the trigger service notifies the external application, and it does not require a response from the custom application.
For example, a user from IT department is able to see Jira, Bitbucket, Administrative / Privileged access across applications like Active Directory, ServiceNow and various other applications in the request center. For a user from Marketing department, the above access is not relevant and with segments, we are abstracting those items. The relevant access for marketing users would be Salesforce CRM and the same will be visible for the users.
In the presentation below, we will be discussing about segments feature in detail :
In the below video, we will provide a practical demonstration on how to configure segments, how it affects the end user perspective using a practical use-case :
Advantages
Limit end user visibility for applicable access
Only the access that is applicable for a subset of identities and relevant for them is displayed using segments. This helps in avoiding the confusion in finding the right role/access profile while making an access request.
Reduce incorrect access requests
End users shall not make any incorrect access requests because the only access items that they’ll see in the request center are already fine tuned and configured according to the organizational requirement.
Limit accidental provisioning
If presented with a lot of access items, users might request for something that they don’t need. This can be avoided by creating and assigning users to their respective segments based on certain criteria.
Reduce cost of software licensing
Due to accidental access provisioning, users might be consuming additional licenses for access that they do not need which is a major costing risk. This can be avoided by configuring segments.
Extensibility of services using vast API collections is sign of a true SaaS solution. SailPointIdentityNow has recently released few APIs which allow us to upload our own connector rules required for app integrations.
Based on Execution type rules are divided into two types:
Cloud Execution
Connector Execution
1)The Rules which are executed in the IDN tenant cloud are called Cloud Execution Rules.
1)The Rules which are executed on virtual Appliance (on premise) are called Connector Execution Rules.
2)There will be a review process for cloud rules to ensure any submitted Cloud Rules meet SailPoint requirements and doesn’t contain code that could harm the system and the only way to upload the rule is through SailPoint.
2)Connector Rules are usually extension of the connector itself. These rules are mainly used to implement pre-processing of data and post-processing of data and to manipulate, merge or otherwise transform the incoming data as it’s being read
Rule Deployment Process
As-Is Process
In As-Is Process for deploying Connector Rules on the tenant developer should follow the below steps:
Rule needs to be developed as per the requirements.
Developed rule shall be submitted to SailPoint Expert services for review.
Post review, rule will be uploaded on to the tenant.
In case of any changes required the rule shall be resubmitted to the SailPoint Expert Services.
To-Be Process
In To-Be process the rule can directly be deployed to the IDN tenant using APIs. In case of any changes required/delete the developer can directly use these APIs and make required changes instead of going through tedious process like earlier.
Advantages and Limitations
Advantages
Easy to Deploy – They are Easy to deploy on to the tenant compared to the entire previous process
Faster deployment of rules – Rules will be deployed on the tenant instantly using APIs where old process used to take a minimum of 24hrs
Low Cost from SailPoint Expert Services – Compare to previous methodology, deploying connector rules using APIs has minimal involvement from Expert Services.
Rework is Faster – In case of any changes rather than repeating the entire process, rework is quicker using these APIs.
Faster Integrations – Using APIs, the overall application integrations are faster.
GET, LIST, CREATE, UPDATE, DELETE, VALIDATE are the APIs that are currently used for connector rule operations. A token with ORG_ADMIN authority is required to perform any operation.
Each progressing year, IT is getting more and more complex. Organizations keep growing and subsequently more and more people come into the organization each with their own needs. These users are then provided with their own levels of access to resources. The problem that arises here is that the growing mess of systems and user access management.
IdentityNow is an IDaaS (Identity as a Service) based IAM solution, unlike IdentityIQ which is on-premise. IdentityNow also helps people get the access that they need and manage the lifecycle around it. The current blog discusses the extensibility features announced by SailPoint. These features will help make security decisions on the go very effectively.
In the following presentation, I will be providing a detailed overview of Extensibility Feature Integration with IdentityNow for Access Requests.
Overview of Extensibility Features:
Users at an enterprise level are distributed among different geographies of the world. SailPoint’s access request integration with applications such as Microsoft Teams and Slack enable the users to get the access that they need right from the tool that they use the most. SailPoint also ensures that the appropriate governance and compliance controls are enforced while providing ease of access to the users while making access requests.
Current Access Request Process :
To briefly understand the current access request process in IdentityNow below is an illustrative diagram:
Roles in IdentityNow combine provisioning to multiple sources by combining different access profiles. However, for access requests, roles can be marked as “requestable”. By doing this, the roles are then visible in the Request Center tab in IdentityNow. We can have approvals in place for this role such that any user who requests for this role, will by routed through an approval process.
Applications in IdentityNow have their own XML structure with their own password policies and account creation restrictions. For the approvals, we can define the approval hierarchy in Access Profiles itself. Once the application has been created, it should be marked as ‘visible in request center’ and ‘allow access requests’.
Users have to login to their IdentityNow tenant with their credentials. They navigate to Request Center tab to see “Applications” and “Roles” where they can make an access request from either of these. Both Roles and Applications facilitate provisioning to the target source using Access Profiles.
Applications and Integration Overview:
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft teams is a chat-based collaboration platform from Microsoft. With capabilities such as documents sharing, online meetings, teams and channels, online video calling and screen sharing, messaging and many more extensible features for business communication. It is extremely user friendly and can facilitate a work environment between remote users and large businesses. Below are the benefits from this integration:
Ease of making access requests from within the Teams Application.
Users can request either for a Role or Application depending on the business needs.
This integration ensures seamless user experience for making access requests.
Below is the process followed post the integration with MS Teams:
Users will login to their Teams application using their Office365 account.
A SailPointchatbot is configured which appears in the Applications tab.
Connect to your IdentityNow tenant and click on “Create Access Request”.
Find and select the Application/Role to request.
Select the role for himself or for others.
Submit the request.
2. Slack
Slack is workspace alternative communication tool just like teams which combines the functionalities for messaging, tools and files. Users can communicate over channels or Direct Messages based on their requirement and it has support for third-party application integrations and add-ins. Although the application is free to use with certain limitations, there is an enterprise level application as well. Below are the benefits from this integration:
Please note that the {api-url} below is the org name of your IdentityNow tenant.
The primary APIs that are used behind this integration are:
List of access request objects: Returns a list of requestable items for an access request.
GET – https://{api-url}.api.identitynow.com/v3/requestable-objects
Create an access request: Submits an access request to IdentityNow. This will not return any result because the request has been submitted by the system. If there are more than one identity for the access request, the JSON payload will contain a list of id’s for each identity.
POST – https://{api-url}.api.sailpoint.com/v3/access-requests
Get the access-request status: Returns a list of access request statuses based on the specified query parameters.
GET – https://{api-url}.api.identitynow.com/beta/access-request-status
In the following video, I will be providing a detailed demo of the access request integration with Teams and Slack.
Ticketing systems form an excessive part of any enterprise’s IT infrastructure. An IT ticketing software, also known as an IT ticketing system, is a software program that enables organizations to resolve their internal IT support queries by managing and streamlining the process of issue resolution. ServiceNow is a global leader in cloud-based ticketing systems and has been playing a visionary role in ITSM and ITOM.
IdentityNow is a leader in the market for a perfect IAM solution for organizations taking the next step into cloud computing. The product is simpler to tack together than several other IAM solutions in the market, thus additional configuration can be completed without the need for specialist resources. The User interface (UI) is a lot easier to interface for end-users and needs less coaching. IdentityNow’s Service Integration Module, or SIM integration with ServiceNow, which converts IdentityNow provisioning actions into tickets in ServiceNow.
The following presentation will give the overall idea of ServiceNow service catalog integration with SailPoint IdentityNow and explanation of the use case,
The following is the demonstration and walk through the IdentityNow integration with Servicenow and showcases the integration use case,
Every enterprise has a huge Unix foot print spanning across thousands of servers running various legacy applications.
As part of the mammoth task of securing the IT environments, securing the Unix servers would be the first step.
At ENH iSecure, we thrive to achieve complete and impeccable solutions leaving nothing to chance.
As a part of these efforts, we are speaking about Identity Governance in Unix with the help of Sailpoint’s IIQ.
The following is a video where we speak about governance of Unix using Sailpoint’s IIQ.
The following is a demo on Unix integration with Sailpoint.
Understanding the AS-IS and TO BE states of the enterprise IT infrastructure is the most important key to achieve success for any Identity management. Approaching such challenge with a wonderful questionnaire would lead to a win-win situation for both the customer as well as the implementer.
At ENH iSecure, we face the challenge of requirements gathering with a strong questionnaire that helps us understand the requirements of the customer very easily. The following list comprises of some important questions during the initial requirement gathering which are part of the questionnaire:
Identity Vault establishment:
Identity vault establishment is the first step of any Identity management implementation. It involves creating a central identity store which shall be the heart of the implementation. As part of the identity vault establishment and future management, we would put up the following questions to the customer:
Initial Creation of Identity vault:
1. What are the sources that help us create the identity vault?
They can be delimited files present at the Unix location or active directory or a HRMS.
2. Are these sources distributed across multiple applications? In case they do find all the applications across which the trusted sources are distributed.
Regarding the Identity vault maintenance:
1. Are there any specific organizational requirements regarding updation of identity vault? Sometimes it is possible that such updations happen at a specific date to match the server loads and burst in server loads because of sudden peaks in usage. For example, Universities which admit many students at spring or fall.
2. How often would we want the incremental updations to happen to the identity vault? How often are complete updations expected?
Information related users:
1. What are the various types of people whom the identity management solutions monitors? For example, employees, contractors, rehires, customers and any other types of users.
2. What are the various operations that could happen to the users of the identity management system? For example, promotion or termination of employees could be operation on the user. Expiry of contract for contractors could be a situation.
3. Identity management solutions maintains users in various states. For examples most of the identity management solutions have an active, disabled or terminated states for users. How are these states expected to change with respect to various actions on the users?
Provisioning related information:
1. What are the various target applications that are present in the IT infrastructure that need to be monitored by the solution?
2. How does the communication to the applications from the identity management solutions happen? Is there a bus service that is running that needs to be passed through or can they be directly communicate to?
3. Are there any rare applications for which we do not have any prebuilt connectors to work with? In such cases we need to develop connectors for communication to happen.
4. What are the various accounts and privileges to be provided to various kinds of users with different attribute values?
5. In case there is any change is user attributes or state of the user , how to deal with the transition to new state of user? For example, in rehire kind of scenario, we temporarily disable the users. Also in case there is a state change, all the accounts that need to provisioned in the state have to be provisioned. Requests based provisioning:
1. Is there a requirement for users to request various accounts or privileges in various applications? What are the various resources that a particular kind of user can request and what is it that they can’t request?
2. How should the various requests be processed? Is there any complex approval process that is involved? For example sometimes it is required that IT Admin as well the manager are expected to approve provisioning an account.
