Top 10 Use Cases of Identity Governance and Administration (IGA)

Top 10 Use Cases of IGA (Identity Governance & Administration) in 2025

Managing access in this new-age business environment is not straightforward. With remote users, exploding SaaS adoption, and data spread across cloud platforms, organizations need a smarter way to govern identities. Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) steps in as a strategic backbone for managing who gets access, when, and under what conditions.

However, what are the key identity governance use cases where investing in an IGA platform makes sense? IGA platforms can deliver value across multiple areas, from speeding up onboarding and ensuring regulatory compliance to automating identity lifecycle processes and reducing IT workload.

Let’s understand what are the top 10 identity governance and administration use cases to help. You can identify where such a platform can create the most impact for your organization

Key Takeaways:

• IGA ensures secure, timely, and purpose-driven access for every user.
• Automation streamlines identity workflows and reduces human error.
• Time-bound privileged access lowers insider threats and risk exposure.
• Modern, cloud-based IGA platforms, like Identity Confluence, scale security for businesses of all sizes.

What are the Use Cases for Identity Governance And Administration?

Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) use cases refer to the practical scenarios where organizations apply IGA capabilities to manage user identities, control access, and enforce security policies.

These use cases span from automating employee onboarding and offboarding to conducting regular access certifications, managing privileged accounts, and ensuring compliance with regulatory standards.

Businesses are navigating complex IT ecosystems, hybrid workforces, multi-cloud environments, and rising cyber threats. Without clear visibility into who has access to what, organizations risk data breaches, failed audits, and operational inefficiencies.

Identity governance use cases help close these gaps by enforcing the principle of least privilege, aligning access with roles, and automating governance tasks that are too error-prone when handled manually.

What are Identity Governance and Administration Use Cases?

1. Automated User Provisioning and Deprovisioning

   IGA connects to HR systems and directories to detect when an employee is hired, promoted, or leaves. Based on predefined rules, it automatically creates or disables user accounts across applications like email, ERP, and collaboration tools. This ensures new hires are productive from day one, while terminated employees instantly lose access, reducing the risk of data breaches and ensuring compliance with regulations.

   
   

   Example: When a new HR executive joins, their access to payroll, HRMS, and email is granted automatically.

   
   

2. Access Certification Campaigns

   IGA periodically generates review tasks that are sent to managers of the organizations, prompting them to validate which users should retain access. Reviewers can approve, revoke, or delegate decisions. Regular certifications ensure only appropriate users retain entitlements, demonstrating proactive compliance and reducing audit findings.

   
   

   Example: Quarterly access reviews for finance applications ensure only authorized users retain access.

   
   

3. Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

   IGA defines roles tied to job functions, departments, or locations, with each role granting a standard set of entitlements. When users are assigned a role, their access is automatically provisioned or adjusted. RBAC simplifies management at scale, enforces least-privilege access, and limits manual provisioning errors.

   
   

   Example: Interns are automatically restricted to sandbox environments.

   
   

4. Privileged Access Governance

   IGA is integrated with privileged access management to track, approve, and monitor all elevated permissions. It requires approvals for privileged sessions, logs activities, and automatically revokes access after use. This prevents misuse of powerful accounts, protects critical systems, and establishes clear accountability.

   
   

   Example: Temporary privileged access granted to an IT admin for a critical fix, with session monitoring and automatic revocation after task completion.

   
   

5. Joiner-Mover-Leaver (JML) Lifestyle Management

   When an employee joins, moves roles, or leaves, the IGA system updates their access rights in real time. Role changes trigger the provisioning of old entitlements and the provisioning of new ones. This dynamic lifecycle management prevents privilege creep and aligns access with current responsibilities.

   
   

   Example: When a project manager moves to operations, old access is removed.

   
   

6. Policy-Driven Access Requests and Approvals

   Employees request access through a self-service portal. The IGA platform automatically applies policies to auto-approve low-risk requests or route them for managerial approval when needed. It streamlines access provisioning, reduces IT workload, and enforces consistent policy controls.

   
   

   Example: Sales team members request CRM access through a self-service portal & auto-approved based on policies.

   
   

7. Compliance Reporting and Audit Readiness

   IGA continuously logs all provisioning, de-provisioning, approvals, and entitlements. Built-in reporting tools generate audit-ready reports that can be exported on demand for regulators or internal compliance teams. Organizations can prove adherence to standards like SOX, GDPR, and HIPAA, reducing the time and stress of audits.

   
   

   Example: Generate an instant SOX compliance report.

   
   

8. Segregation of Duties (SoD) Enforcement

   IGA enforces SoD policies by detecting and preventing conflicting entitlements. It blocks or flags when one user has permission to both create vendors and approve payments. SoD enforcement reduces fraud risk, strengthens internal controls, and makes compliance simpler.

   
   

   Example: In the finance team, no user can be both a vendor creator and a payment approver in the ERP.

   
   

9. Third-Party Vendor Access Governance

   IGA creates time-bound access profiles for contractors, partners, or consultants. It automatically expires their access at the end of their engagement and logs their activity for accountability. This protects sensitive resources by ensuring external users have the least privileged access for only as long as necessary.

   
   

   Example: A contractor receives 30-day access to cloud analytics.

   
   

10. Just-In-Time (JIT) Privileged Access

    Instead of maintaining always-on admin rights, IGA workflows grant temporary elevated access only when needed. Access is automatically revoked after a specified period, with the session optionally recorded. JIT access reduces the risk of privilege misuse and limits the window of exposure in the event of credentials being recorded.

    
    

    Example: A DevOps engineer requests temporary root access to a production server for a patch, granted for just 2 hours.

    
    

Real-World Application: Use Case in Action

Industry: IT
Compliance: GDPR, SOC 2, HIPAA
Impact: Manual provisioning slashed from 100% to 5%, employee onboarding completed within 30 minutes, IT support tickets reduced by 40%, achieved annual cost savings of $250k, and compliance audit time reduced from 2-3 days to 3 hours

Effective identity governance and administration (IGA) lays the foundation of a secure, compliant, and agile enterprise. A reliable and suitable IGA platform can help organizations in achieving all the business objectives related to identity and security. A top IT firm was struggling with manual provisioning and de-provisioning, as the new hires had to wait at least 2 to 3 days to get system access. The IT teams were overwhelmed by the number of identity-related tickets raised, like revoking access and role changes.

Read the case study to understand how an automated IGA platform transformed identity management for the IT firm.

How to Identify the Right IGA Use Cases for Your Organization?

Implementing IGA effectively starts with understanding where it can deliver the most value. If you are just starting with the IGA journey, then it is best to follow the governance-focused approach that focuses on high-priority security and risk concerns.

So, let’s understand how you can narrow down the use cases for your organization:

1. Audit current access challenges

   Conduct a thorough research and evaluate your existing identity and access processes. Look for areas that need improvement, like onboarding, manual approvals, access inconsistencies, or keeping a tab on dormant accounts that may pose security risks.

2. Prioritize high-risk areas

   Focus on systems and departments that handle sensitive data or have complex access requirements. For instance, finance, legal, and IT often benefit most from identity governance.

3. Align use cases to roles

   Map use cases to the stakeholders involved. For example:

• HR drives onboarding, so they need an IGA platform to expedite onboarding and offboarding.
• IT manages provisioning, so they need an automated solution to resolve the tickets related to identity-related issues quickly.
• Compliance oversees audits and certifications, so they need a centralized platform that can generate reports automatically by collecting data from all modules and departments.

4. Choose tools that support automation and SoD

   Select an IGA platform that can automate repetitive tasks and enforce SoD (Segregation of Duties) policies to prevent conflicts of interest or inappropriate or toxic access combinations, like a user having both the ability to add vendors and approve payments.

Why Choose Tech Prescient’s Identity Governance and Administration Solution?

If you are looking for an IGA solution that meets your specific use case, then Identity Confluence, Tech Prescient’s Identity Governance and Administration, is one of the best options. Whether you're looking to automate access workflows, enforce Zero Trust principles, introduce PAM, or maintain continuous compliance, the IGA platform supports all the necessary features to do it right.

Identity Confluence automates provisioning, deprovisioning, and access reviews, reducing manual effort and security gaps. It also has a compliance suite, which includes compliance reconciliation, policy violation, and an evidence center. With all of these features, the team can get an idea about the number of orphan accounts, inactive users and get real-time alerts when users violate any defined access policies.

You can set up three different kinds of access policies: birthright, SoD, and compliance (HIPAA, GDPR, and PCI-DSS), and automate the access approval based on pre-defined rules and organization rules.

The IGA platform has a reporting engine that aggregates the data from all the modules and generates customizable reports on access history, role assignments, lifecycle events, and policy violations. These reports can be fed to business intelligence tools for further insights.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. What is the most critical best practice in identity governance?
   Implementing least-privilege access combined with automated provisioning and regular access reviews.

2. How often should I conduct access reviews?
   Best practice recommends quarterly reviews, or more frequently for high-risk systems.

3. Can small businesses implement IGA best practices affordably?
   Yes, modern IGA platforms scale to fit businesses of all sizes, including cloud-native solutions.

4. What is the difference between IAM best practices and IGA best practices?
   IAM focuses on authentication and authorization, and IGA governs the lifecycle, entitlements, and compliance aspects.

5. How does automation impact IGA best practices?
   Automation accelerates provisioning, enforces policy consistency, and reduces manual error.