Managing Access Rights & ISO 27001 Compliance with IAM Solutions
February 11, 2025 · by Ezgi Çakal
As a recent ISO 27001-certified company, we have gained valuable insights into compliance requirements and their practical applications. With hands-on experience across various sectors such as banking, manufacturing, and healthcare, in this post, we would like to address some shared challenges and needs that organizations face on their journey to compliance
Today’s data load on organizations makes it an obligation to take control of access to data. Here is why:
61% of consumers feel like they’ve lost control over how their personal information is used, and
86% want more transparency, according to Salesforce.
But it’s not only about the consumer. A data leak caused by a failure to manage access rights may cause some legal and financial problems.
The solution is to adopt a safety-first approach and earn trust badges like ISO 27001 by complying with the standards. This approach helps maintain legal and financial stability while strengthening the credibility and reliability of your organization.
However, the processes to comply with these standards are complicated and challenging.
At this point, IAM solutions come to the scene, as the research shows that 89% of respondents have been impacted by an identity-based attack, and %80 of them believe that better identity management tools could have prevented the impact of such attacks. This number is huge, and when implemented properly, IAM solutions could prevent these attacks by regulating access rights.
How to Implement Key IAM Practices to Manage Access Rights
Effectively managing access rights —a cornerstone of robust cybersecurity- lies at the very core of compliance with ISO 27001.
Annex A Control 5.18 says, “Access rights to information and other associated assets shall be provisioned, reviewed, modified, and removed in accordance with the organization’s topic-specific policy on and rules for access control.” Also complemented with control 5.15, “Rules to control physical and logical access to information and other associated assets shall be established and implemented based on business and information security requirements”.
That’s why, compliance requires targeted and sometimes complex actions. Here, you will see what to take care of to get certified for your robust information security, and how IAM can simplify those actions for you.
1. Access Control
ISO Guidance specifies, "Access to information and other associated assets shall be restricted in accordance with the established topic-specific policy on access control" in Annex A 8.3. IAM tools make it easy by automating role assignments and adjustments, ensuring employees only have access to what they need.
Access control can be implemented using the models tailored to organizational needs, from role-based frameworks to context-driven attribute or policy-based approaches.
Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Permissions are assigned to roles (e.g., Admin, Editor, Viewer), and identities are assigned to roles. For example, an IAM solution automatically grants new hires birth rights —a predefined set of access rights aligned with their job title and department—on their first day of work. This ensures they can begin their duties without unnecessary delays and makes it possible to review them periodically to ensure they remain accurate.
Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC): Access is granted based on user attributes (e.g., department, clearance level), resource attributes, or environmental factors (e.g., time of day).
Policy-Based Access Control (PBAC): Access rules are defined through policies.
Discretionary Access Control (DAC): The resource owner determines who can access it.
Mandatory Access Control (MAC): Strict policies control access, often in environments with high-security requirements, such as government or military.
How IAM Systems support access control?
IAM solutions enforce access control by granting or denying permission based on predefined policies, roles, or rules. Effective access control addresses key questions such as
- What can this identity do?
- What resources can this identity access?
- What operations are permitted on these resources?
Depending on the organizational and compliance needs, IAM solutions support multiple access control models: RBAC, ABAC, and PBAC. For example, with RBAC, a new hire in the Finance department can automatically be granted access to financial reporting tools on their first day based on their assigned role as‘ Financial Controller’. ABAC enables attribute-based decisions, such as granting access to a database only if the user is connected to the corporate network. Whereas, PBAC allows for dynamic access control, such as permitting users in the Sales department to access customer records only after completing mandatory compliance training."
Besides, you can fine-tune the granularity of permissions by granting access to entire systems or applications, or differentiate specific actions, providing “Read” vs “Write” access to a file.
We, as praktiga, help organizations implement access control frameworks tailored to their needs. Our approach includes collaborating with your teams in policy definition, designing frameworks for role modeling, configuring your IAM solution for implementation and automation, and enabling audit readiness.
Our expertise ensures that your IAM solution becomes an integral part of your compliance strategy while enhancing security and operational efficiency.
2. Provisioning and De-Provisioning
Keeping your access rights up-to-date covers effective user provisioning and de-provisioning. This step touches Annex A 5.16, which says, “The full life cycle of identities shall be managed”.
Taking away access rights when they are no longer needed is at least as important as giving the right access, at the right time, to help employees start working immediately.
Neglecting these processes puts your organization at risk, opening the door to unauthorized access and potential data breaches.
How does IAM Solutions help the process?
IAM solutions are your secret weapon for seamless employee onboarding and offboarding. By integrating these tools with your HR systems, you can automate access provisioning and de-provisioning based on predefined rules, save time, reduce manual errors, and strengthen your organization’s security.
As praktiga, our services include establishing secure and automated connections across systems and applications using different interfaces (e.g. APIs), ensuring seamless access management across your IT landscape.
We assist organizations in designing and configuring rules for automatic provisioning and de-provisioning tailored to their organizational roles and workflows.
Also, by implementing workflows to review and recertify access rights periodically, ensuring compliance with least-privilege principles, our solutions empower you to manage the full identity lifecycle efficiently.
3. Business Continuity
ISO 27001 emphasizes the importance of maintaining the availability and resilience of critical business processes during both unexpected and expected disruptions. Control 5.30 states, “ICT (Information and Communications Technology) readiness shall be planned, implemented, maintaine,d and tested based on business continuity objectives and ICT continuity requirements.”
IAM solutions play a pivotal role in supporting business continuity by ensuring secure and uninterrupted access to essential systems, data, and request and approval workflows.
How IAM components support business continuity?
In the event of an employee's unavailability (e.g., vacation, illness, or sudden departure), IAM solutions support delegation to temporarily transfer approval/access rights to another authorized user. This ensures that critical tasks are completed without delay while maintaining a secure and controlled access environment. Likewise, transfer processes are configured to prevent access rights and ownership from remaining unattended and unchecked.
We can help you set up secure delegation processes, enabling controlled handover of responsibilities. Our IAM solutions allow for time-bound, temporary access management and audit trails, ensuring traceability of detailed logs.
4. Segregation of Duties (SoD)
ISO directly addresses SoD in Control 5.3 “Conflicting duties and conflicting areas of responsibility shall be segregated.”
SoD is all about protecting your organization from risks by dividing critical tasks among different people. For instance, you might separate the roles of those who approve financial transactions from those who process them.
How IAM solutions enable SoD?
IAM solutions make it easy to enforce the Segregation of Duties (SoD) by structuring roles and permissions to keep critical tasks separated. With these tools, you can assign granular, task-based permissions that ensure no individual has conflicting access rights. This safeguards your organization from potential risks like fraud or errors.
In more detail, IAM tools allow organizations to design and structure roles based on job functions, define conflicting resources, and monitor violation statuses. If a user requests access to a resource that may lead to a SoD conflict, configurable approval workflows route the request to a violation evaluation process. Real-time alerts and detailed violation reports support immediate intervention and corrective actions when needed.
For example, the user who raises a purchase order cannot also approve it, and the approver does not have system access to modify vendor details, preventing fraud. However, if there is only one employee who needs to request and approve the purchase due to an emergency, this violation can be evaluated and those conflicting resources can be assigned to the user, for a limited period, being monitored.
As part of our IAM consultancy, we go beyond role and permission assignments to integrate your organization's unique business rules into IAM systems.
Besides, you can demonstrate your compliance to ISO 27001 or other regulatory frameworks with detailed reports of all SoD activities.
The Key Advantage: Compliance Without Complexity
Taking ISO 27001 seriously doesn’t mean you have to struggle through its challenges alone. IAM solutions are designed to address some of the problems that ISO highlights, naturally leading to compliance. With the right tools and expertise, achieving ISO 27001 certification becomes manageable.
Contact us today to learn how our IAM solutions can streamline your path to ISO 27001. Let’s make compliance simpler, together.