Cybersecurity Skills For a Successful IGA Implementation

Like many other enterprise-scale IT solution deployments, Identity governance and administration solutions require a large variety of skills to achieve a successful implementation. Organizations need to ensure they have all the skills in place to succeed.

As with all major enterprise IT solution deployments, an identity governance and administration (IGA) project needs a team with a variety of skills needed for cybersecurity protection to ensure its success.

However, IGA solutions often impact a greater number of departments across the entire organization, require technical integration with many other software products, and involve a wide variety of stakeholders—both inside and outside the company.

These factors mean that IGA deployment projects typically need a broader set of skills to ensure a successful implementation, which can be divided into the following categories:

1. Technical knowledge
2. Business knowledge
3. Soft skills

It is important to ensure that the IT cybersecurity specialists on the IGA implementation team have a balance of all these skills. However, not all the skills must be available within the organization as the team can, and should, be augmented with external consultants as well as specialists from their chosen IGA vendor.

Look for IGA Skills in a Cybersecurity Technician

Before starting a deployment project, the organization should work with a vendor and, if appropriate, other experienced consultants to decide which skillsets are needed for the organization’s environment. Once this skills list has been established, the organization should perform a gap analysis to determine whether any of the identified skills are missing. Any gaps should be filled either by recruiting from within the organization or from external sources such as new recruits or consultants.

There are times when it is better to consider transferring employees from other departments in the organization, and times when it is better to find an outsider depending on the skillset required. For example, if the IGA implementation team lacks knowledge about the structure of the business, it is better to find somebody who has worked in the company and knows its inner workings. However, if the organization lacks someone with experience of deploying an IGA solution within the organization’s industry, then recruiting an external candidate with specific industry knowledge will be the best approach.

What Skills Do You Need For A Successful IGA Implementation?

In cybersecurity, required skills can vary between more technical skills like programming and soft skills such as strong stakeholder management and communication.

Technical Skills

While it is difficult to specify exactly which skills will be required—this depends on the business’ current situation—it is important that IT cybersecurity specialists possess a variety of technical skills, as IGA in cybersecurity implementation teams can pose a wide range of challenges.

The following are some technical skills that are needed within an IGA implementation team:

1. Database Management: Knowledge of how to manipulate databases is necessary as IGA implementations include tasks such as the importing of identity records into the system.
2. Technical Integration: IGA solutions need to connect to a wide variety of systems such as the HR system and business systems to collect employee and user account information, and to provision user access on an ongoing basis. Experience with connectivity standards such as REST API, XML, LDAP, SOAP, and SCIM is necessary to help with the configuration of these connections.
3. Programming Languages and Scripting: While many IGA solutions have advanced configuration capabilities which allow the organization to change the solution’s behavior to match their requirements, it may be necessary to have team members who are skilled in languages such as .NET or Java so that customizations can be made if they are not available in the base product.
4. Infrastructure Support: During an IGA deployment, it is necessary to have team members supporting the network, firewalls, servers, and storage as these are all critical to the implementation.
5. Security Frameworks: As an IGA solution forms part of the wider cybersecurity protection of an organization, it is important for the implementation team to understand the other aspects of security and how all the components interact with one another. Of critical importance is an understanding of Microsoft Active Directory as this is often a central part of identity management.
6. Familiarity with Adjacent Solutions: There are many solutions from different vendors that can complement an IGA solution to help organizations protect their environments. Having familiarity with adjacent solutions, helps IGA implementation teams to know how to best use other solutions alongside the IGA solution that they are implementing. Depending on the organization, there may be a need for members of the team to have experience of privileged access management (PAM), data access governance (DAG), user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA), or security and event management (SIEM) systems to name a few.

Project Management Skills

The following non-technical project management skills are also required within a strong IGA implementation team:

1. Project management: An IGA implementation involves a lot of moving parts, both in terms of the people involved and the processes that must be carried out in a strict order. Therefore, it is important to have proper project management experience within the team to enable the project to run smoothly on time, and within budget.
2. Change management: IGA projects require significant change across organizations. A change management function within a deployment team ensures that a structured approach is adopted to help make transitions as smooth as possible.
3. Organizational Transformation: To be successful, an IGA project must be closely aligned with its organization and must aim to solve business problems. As a result, it is necessary for some members of the team to understand how the business operates. This includes business processes, applications that are used within different departments as well as what they are used for, and industry-specific knowledge that could impact IGA deployment.
4. Regulatory and Compliance Frameworks: Usually, a significant part of any IGA deployment business case involves managing compliance. The IGA solution needs to ensure compliance with different internal and external regulations. Members of the IGA team must have an appreciation of the relevant compliance regulations and frameworks (e.g. GDPR, ISO 27001) so that they can support the business effectively.

Soft Skills

There are several soft skills that are needed to ensure that the project runs smoothly. These key soft skills are:

1. Stakeholder management: Due to the nature of an IGA solution, there are many different stakeholders involved. These include HR providing the initial employee and contractor data, business system owners who need to grant access to their systems and verify user access, line managers to verify appropriate access for direct reports, and end users who will interact with the IGA solution on a regular basis. This large group of stakeholders needs to understand the reasons for deploying the solution, be kept informed about the status of the projects, and finally, be trained so that they can use it effectively.
2. Managing expectations: Tied in closely with the skill of stakeholder management, being able to manage expectations of everyone involved is a critical skill. The complexity of an IGA deployment due to the many different departments involved, the list of applications that need to be integrated, and the promise of increased security, compliance, and efficiency mean that there are often high expectations from business system owners, end users, and senior management. Expectations of the various stakeholders need to be managed as visible progress may initially appear slow to them during the early implementation stages.
3. Communication Skills: To successfully get buy-in from different stakeholders and manage expectations, it is critical that there are members of the IGA implementation team who have skills to address all levels of the organization, from a junior technical resource through to senior management. The communicators should be able to produce everything from quick update emails to detailed reports as well as being able to give comprehensive presentations to groups of stakeholders. In addition, they should be equipped to train end users and managers in using the new system. ​

Ensure Security, Compliance, and Efficiency Benefits

IGA projects aimed at ensuring increases in security, compliance, and efficiency touch most—if not all—parts of the organization. To be successful, the team that comes together to implement an IGA solution needs to include a wide variety of technical, non-technical, and soft skills. If an organization does not have the full complement of skills within the team, it runs the risk of failure due to not having a full understanding of, and not being able to execute on, all the necessary elements.

Access The Best Practices in The Industry

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