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 SailPoint chatbot 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:
- Ease of making access requests from within the Slack Application.
- Users can request either for a Role or Application depending on the business need.
- This integration ensures seamless user experience for making access requests.
Below is the process followed post the integration with Slack:
- A user will login to their Slack application using their work email and authenticating from it.
- A SailPoint chatbot is configured which appears in the Applications tab.
- Connect to your IdentityNow tenant and click on “Create Access Request” by entering a forward slash in the SailPoint’s chatbot.
- Find and select the Application/Role to request.
- Select the role for himself or for others.
- Submit the request.
Access Request : From an API perspective
- This integration is achieved using REST API’s. REST stands for Representational State Transfer.
- It is an architectural style for the web services.
- This architectural style helps in lesser use of bandwidth to make an application more suitable to communicate over the internet.
- It is often regarded as the language of the internet.
- The primary methods that the REST APIs communicate are
- Create – POST
- Read – GET
- Update – PUT/PATCH
- Delete – DELETE
- SailPoint has developed the REST API’s for IdentityNow. The reference documentation is available at developer.sailpoint.com
- 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
- List of access request objects: Returns a list of requestable items for an access request.
In the following video, I will be providing a detailed demo of the access request integration with Teams and Slack.
