Role-Based Access Control as a Service using Okta
Industry:
Telecom
Organization Size:
10,000+ employees
Headquarters:
Holmdel, New Jersey
Overview
As enterprises scale their digital operations, ensuring secure, efficient, and compliant access control becomes increasingly challenging. A global communications platform serving over 10,000 users and operating across 150+ applications sought to address these challenges by implementing a Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) as a Service solution. Their objectives were to enhance security, streamline onboarding and offboarding, reduce manual tasks, and ensure enterprise-wide visibility and compliance.
Tech Prescient partnered with the client to design and implement a cloud-native RBAC platform powered by Okta and deployed on AWS. This solution automated user lifecycle events, enforced least privilege, and provided an auditable trail of all access activities, transforming access governance across the organization.
Client Objectives
The client set out to:
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Build a centralized platform for managing role-based access.
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Integrate with Okta for leveraging its identity and group management capabilities.
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Automate provisioning and de-provisioning workflows.
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Enable business unit managers to govern access autonomously within guardrails.
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Ensure a complete, real-time audit trail of access assignments and changes.
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Enforce least privilege access and prepare for regulatory compliance with minimal manual effort.
Business and Technical Challenges
The client had a hybrid IT environment comprising SaaS platforms, on-premise tools, and internal microservices. This complex setup lacked centralized access management and identity governance, resulting in the following challenges:
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Lack of Role Clarity and Ownership :
- Access entitlements had evolved without clear guidelines or oversight, leading to:
- Overlapping and unnecessary permissions across applications.
- Orphaned accounts for users who had left the organization.
- No designated owners are responsible for managing access to individual tools or roles.
- Inability to determine who had access to what resources, and for what reason.
- This ambiguity not only weakened security but also raised serious compliance concerns.
- Access entitlements had evolved without clear guidelines or oversight, leading to:
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Manual Lifecycle Management for Over 10,000 Users :
- Onboarding processes required multiple manual tickets per user across different tools.
- Mid-life role transitions (e.g., promotions or departmental changes) often failed to remove outdated permissions.
- Offboarding was inconsistent, and access revocation was often delayed, creating security gaps.
- Without automation, administrators struggled to keep up with the pace of organizational changes, leading to privilege creep and audit failures.
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Decentralized Access Management Across 150+ Applications :
- The organization’s application stack included:
- SaaS platforms like Salesforce, Zoom, JIRA, GitHub.
- On-premise tools integrated with Active Directory.
- Custom internal microservices-based platforms.
- Managing access manually across so many systems led to fragmented controls, inconsistent user experiences, and administrative overload.
- The organization’s application stack included:
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Compliance Gaps and Poor Auditability :
- The organization faced difficulties in preparing for internal and external audits:
- No system for periodic access reviews or role certifications.
- Audit trails were missing or difficult to compile.
- The principle of least privilege was not enforced or verifiable.
- Growing complexity of access controls made scaling and governance unmanageable.
- The organization faced difficulties in preparing for internal and external audits:
Solution Delivered by Tech Prescient
Tech Prescient developed and deployed a secure, cloud-native RBAC solution built on AWS infrastructure and integrated with Okta for centralized identity management. The system enabled end-to-end automation of access governance.
Core Components
Okta Integration:
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Used for identity lifecycle management, group-based access, and federated authentication.
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Event-driven triggers were configured to initiate provisioning flows based on user lifecycle changes (e.g., joiners, movers, leavers).
RBAC Admin Console:
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Web-based application for defining and managing business roles.
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Allowed role owners and application owners to configure permissions, assign approvers, and manage policies.
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Offered dashboards and search tools to review role hierarchies and access assignments.
RBAC Provisioning Engine:
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Event-driven backend service built using AWS Lambda.
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Automatically executed provisioning or de-provisioning actions via REST APIs across all supported applications.
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Logged all actions to ensure traceability.
AWS Services:
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Lambda: Serverless compute to handle provisioning logic at scale.
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DynamoDB: Managed storage for role definitions and access history.
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SQS/SNS: Queue and notification services for event handling and alerts.
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CloudTrail & CloudWatch: Logging, monitoring, and alerting for security and operational transparency.
User Personas and Roles:
The platform defined clear roles and responsibilities across user types:
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Admin: Central administrator managing the platform, user directories, and integrations.
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Owner: Responsible for specific business roles or application-level access governance.
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Approver: Reviews and approves or denies user access requests.
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Manager: Assigns roles to team members and oversees their access.
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Auditor: Has read-only access to logs and can generate compliance reports.
These personas helped decentralize decision-making while maintaining compliance through structured workflows.
How It Works: Role-Based Provisioning Workflow
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Role Mapping: Each business role was mapped to a corresponding Okta group.
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Automated Access Provisioning: When a user was assigned to a role in Okta, a webhook was triggered to the RBAC engine, which then executed provisioning actions.
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Role Change and Access Revocation: When a user changed roles or left the company, the RBAC engine automatically revoked associated permissions.
Key Features:
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Granular Access Control: Permissions defined at the level of role → group → application → resource.
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Automated Lifecycle Management: Complete hands-free provisioning and de-provisioning for over 150 applications.
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Role Ownership and Delegation: Allowed business teams to define and manage their own access hierarchies.
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Audit Logging: Every action was logged with timestamp, user, and system for traceability.
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Review Campaigns: Managers could conduct quarterly access reviews with in-platform reporting.
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Self-Service Requests: Users could request access to specific roles, routed through appropriate approval chains.
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Pluggable Framework: New applications could be integrated by simply adding configuration files and APIs.
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Scalable Architecture: Serverless and stateless, capable of supporting thousands of provisioning events daily.
Business Impact:
Impact Area | Before Implementation | After Implementation |
|---|---|---|
Operational Efficiency | ||
Onboarding Time | 2–3 days per employee | Less than 30 minutes per employee (automated) |
JIRA Access Requests | Over 400 tickets processed monthly | Automated workflows handling approvals |
Untracked Admin Access | 15% of users with untracked admin access | Less than 1% of users with untracked admin access |
Provisioned Applications | 50 applications automated | Over 150 applications automated (automated and consistent) |
Security Enhancements | ||
Unauthorized Access Risk | High, due to manual processes and outdated access | Reduced, with real-time access revocation and least privilege enforcement |
Privilege Creep | Significant due to manual role management | Minimally present due to automated role management and lifecycle updates |
Compliance | ||
Audit and Reporting | Manual, time-consuming, and error-prone | Automated, real-time auditing and reporting |
Access Review Process | Inconsistent and manual access reviews | Automated quarterly reviews and certifications |
Regulatory Compliance | Challenging to track and ensure access is compliant with regulations | Easily track and prove compliance (100% compliant with GDPR, ISO) |
IT Overhead | ||
IT Staff Time on Access Management | High, due to manual intervention for provisioning, de-provisioning, and role changes | Reduced, with automated processes for provisioning and role management |
Conclusion
By adopting Tech Prescient’s RBAC-as-a-Service offering powered by Okta and AWS, the client transformed its access governance model:
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Enabled secure, scalable identity management across 150 applications
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Improved employee experience with faster onboarding and role-based access.
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Ensured regulatory compliance through automated certifications and audits.
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Reduced IT overhead by eliminating manual provisioning and access approvals.
Tech Prescient’s solution isn’t just about access—it’s about agility, compliance, and security at enterprise scale.
Next Step
Looking to implement RBAC at scale across your SaaS ecosystem?
Tech Prescient’s identity platform, Identity Confluence, delivers intelligent access governance tailored to your environment.
