CISSP Guide to Identity Lifecycle Management and Forgotten Accounts

Summary

An educational guide to identity lifecycle management explains least-privilege provisioning, scheduled access reviews, manager ownership, and automated deprovisioning to reduce privilege creep and risks from dormant accounts.

Key points

• Treat identity management as a lifecycle with clear owners for provisioning, maintenance, and deprovisioning.
• Grant new accounts only the access required for the person's role.
• Conduct periodic access reviews to catch outdated permissions and privilege creep; managers or data owners should review access.
• Automate deprovisioning through HR termination workflows and periodically check for orphaned accounts.
• Unremoved access and dormant accounts can create security risks and increase the chance of unauthorized access.