Identity governance and administration, or IGA, is the discipline of managing identity lifecycle, access approvals, reviews, and policy enforcement across systems. It matters because organizations need more than just authentication—they need durable control over who has access, why, and for how long.
What is Identity Governance and Administration (IGA)?
IGA focuses on the business and operational control layer around identities and entitlements. It commonly includes joiner-mover-leaver workflows, access certification campaigns, approval processes, role governance, segregation-of-duties checks, and policy-based access administration.
IGA helps organizations reduce stale access, improve auditability, and enforce governance across employees, contractors, vendors, and service identities.
What IGA Programs Commonly Handle
IGA programs commonly handle provisioning requests, access reviews, entitlement governance, role models, separation-of-duty conflicts, policy exceptions, and deprovisioning when users or vendors no longer need access.
IGA vs. IAM
IAM is the broader identity and access discipline. IGA is a more specific governance-focused subset that emphasizes lifecycle, approvals, access reviews, and policy control over entitlements.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do organizations adopt IGA?
They adopt it to reduce access sprawl, improve audit readiness, support compliance, and make access decisions more controlled and reviewable over time.
Why can IGA projects become difficult?
Common problems include poor role design, unclear data ownership, messy entitlement structures, weak application integration, and trying to automate bad access models instead of fixing them first.
