Identity governance vs identity management: what IAM teams miss

TL;DR: Identity governance and identity management are related but distinct layers of the identity stack: one defines and reviews access policy, the other provisions, authenticates, and maintains identities, according to Zluri. The distinction matters because misaligned governance leaves review gaps, over-provisioning, and weaker compliance evidence across human, machine, and lifecycle programmes.

NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Zluri: Identity Governance vs Identity Management

Questions worth separating out

Q: What is the difference between identity governance and identity management?

A: Identity governance defines the rules for access, review, certification, and audit accountability, while identity management handles the mechanics of creating, maintaining, and authenticating identities.

Q: How should security teams separate access provisioning from access governance?

A: Security teams should assign provisioning, deprovisioning, and directory maintenance to operational identity management workflows, while keeping policy approval, certification, and exception handling inside governance workflows.

Q: Why do access reviews matter if identity management already tracks accounts?

A: Identity management can show which accounts exist, but it cannot prove those accounts are still appropriate.

Practitioner guidance

• Map governance controls to management controls separately Document which teams own policy approval, access certification, and audit evidence, then map provisioning, authentication, and directory maintenance to the operational stack.
• Rebuild access reviews as decision workflows Do not treat reviews as passive reporting.
• Govern lifecycle events as policy-triggered processes Tie joiner, mover, and leaver events to explicit approval rules and revocation steps so provisioning and deprovisioning happen because the business event occurred, not because someone remembered to update a ticket.

What's in the full article

Zluri's full article covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:

• Step-by-step onboarding and offboarding playbooks for SaaS access workflows
• Access certification workflow configuration, including reviewer assignment and template use
• Examples of automation for provisioning, deprovisioning, and review scheduling
• Product-specific interface details for teams implementing identity workflows

👉 Read Zluri's analysis of identity governance versus identity management →

Identity governance vs identity management: what IAM teams miss?

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