Top Metrics to Evaluate Your Access Review Program

Effective user access reviews are a crucial component of maintaining security, ensuring compliance, and enforcing the principle of least privilege across your organization. However, just performing the reviews isn’t enough. To ensure that your identity governance and administration (IGA) strategy is working, it’s essential to measure the success of your access review program through key performance indicators (KPIs). These metrics provide valuable insights into how well your program is functioning, where improvements are needed, and how it impacts overall security.

In this article, we’ll discuss the top metrics you should be tracking to evaluate the effectiveness of your user access review program and how IGA solutions can help streamline this process.

1. Completion Rate

The completion rate measures the percentage of user access reviews that were completed within a specified timeframe, such as a quarter or year. This metric is crucial because it gives insight into how efficiently the access review process is running and whether it’s meeting deadlines.

Why it matters:
If completion rates are low, it could indicate that the review process is too complex, stakeholders are disengaged, or there are bottlenecks in the workflow.

How to improve it:
Automate reminders and streamline workflows using identity governance and administration tools. These tools can send notifications to responsible parties, track progress, and escalate overdue reviews to ensure completion on time.

2. Time to Review

Time to review measures the average amount of time it takes for a reviewer to complete a user access review. This metric is a good indicator of efficiency and helps highlight any delays in decision-making.

Why it matters:
Long review times could point to a lack of clarity around access needs or inadequate training for reviewers. Additionally, prolonged delays could leave critical systems exposed to potential threats.

How to improve it:
Provide reviewers with all necessary information, including access history, usage patterns, and context, through an identity governance solution. Automation can also reduce manual intervention, speeding up the process.

3. Percentage of Access Revoked

This metric tracks the percentage of user access that was revoked during a review cycle. While a low number might indicate well-implemented access controls, an excessively low rate could signal that access reviews are not being conducted thoroughly enough.

Why it matters:
If very few access rights are revoked, it may mean that access was granted unnecessarily in the first place, or that reviewers are not identifying unnecessary access privileges during the review process.

How to improve it:
Ensure that your user access review process is aligned with the principle of least privilege. Use an identity governance solution to automate the removal of over-permissioned accounts and set rules for access reviews that promote the revocation of unnecessary access.

4. Audit Trail Completeness

An audit trail completeness metric tracks how well your access review process is documented. Each action (approval, rejection, or escalation) should be logged for future reference, particularly during compliance audits.

Why it matters:
An incomplete audit trail can raise red flags during audits and leave your organization vulnerable to compliance issues. Full traceability is necessary to ensure transparency and accountability.

How to improve it:
Automate logging and tracking of review actions with identity governance and administration tools. These solutions can maintain an accurate, tamper-proof record of every step in the review process, simplifying compliance reporting.

5. Access Review Accuracy

Access review accuracy measures how often the access review decisions made by reviewers are correct and don’t require re-evaluation or corrections.

Why it matters:
Poor accuracy can lead to mismanagement of user access, potentially causing employees to lose necessary access or, worse, retain access they shouldn’t have. This creates security risks and can hinder operational efficiency.

How to improve it:
Provide reviewers with detailed context about each user’s role and activities, which can help them make more informed decisions. Consider incorporating machine learning or AI-driven tools in your identity governance platform to assist reviewers in identifying patterns of inappropriate access.

6. Privileged Account Review Frequency

Privileged accounts are high-risk assets that require frequent and thorough access reviews. This metric tracks how often privileged accounts undergo reviews compared to regular user accounts.

Why it matters:
Privileged accounts, such as system admins or finance personnel, have elevated access levels and thus pose a higher security risk if misused. A failure to review these accounts regularly increases the chance of internal security breaches.

How to improve it:
Ensure that privileged accounts are reviewed on a more frequent basis, potentially using more stringent review protocols. Identity governance and administration tools can help you flag high-risk accounts for more frequent reviews and better security oversight.

Final Thoughts

By tracking these user access review metrics, you can evaluate the effectiveness of your program, spot inefficiencies, and identify areas for improvement. In addition, leveraging identity governance and administration solutions helps streamline the entire access review process, ensuring that reviews are conducted on time, with context, and in a way that improves overall security posture.

With the right metrics in place, organizations can better control access, reduce risk, and ensure compliance, ultimately improving the security and integrity of critical systems. Regularly monitoring these metrics gives you the insights needed to make data-driven decisions and strengthen your organization’s access management strategy