Services/IAM Plan & Design
Actionable Advisory Assessment.
A clear picture of access risk, and a sequence to fix it
The problem
Most organisations cannot produce a reliable answer to a simple question: who has access to what.
Not because nobody cares, but because the answer lives in twenty systems, each with its own idea of an account.
The assessment matters because access risk is invisible until it is not. Excess entitlements cost nothing day to day, which is why they accumulate for years. They become expensive in exactly two moments: when an attacker uses them, and when an auditor documents them. An assessment is the controlled, inexpensive way to have that reckoning on the organisation's own terms and timeline.
Where this typically comes up
An audit flags excessive or unexplained access.
The finding usually names a handful of accounts, but the pattern behind it is systemic. An assessment sizes the real problem before the next audit finds the rest of it.
A breach or incident post-mortem asks how an account held those rights.
Incident reviews regularly reveal that the compromised account had far more access than its role justified, and that nobody had looked in years.
An IGA program needs a clean baseline before rollout.
Governance platforms automate whatever they are fed. Feeding them years of accumulated entitlement debt automates the mess. Assessment first, automation second.
Leadership asks for a risk picture before approving budget.
A concrete inventory of exposure converts an abstract funding request into a specific one: this risk, this cost to fix, this sequence.
What the engagement covers
Inventory of accounts and entitlements across the estate
Directories, cloud platforms, business applications, and infrastructure get enumerated into a single view, reconciled against HR records so every account maps to a person, a service, or a question mark that needs answering.
Detection of orphan, dormant, and shared accounts
Accounts with no living owner, no recent activity, or multiple users are the cheapest risk reduction available in IAM. Each gets identified with evidence: last logon, source system, and probable owner.
Analysis of privileged access concentration.
The assessment maps where administrative and high-impact entitlements pool, including toxic combinations where one identity holds rights that should never coexist, such as payment creation and payment approval.
Access path mapping.
How access is actually granted, through group nesting, inheritance, and informal processes, gets compared against how policy says it is granted. The gap between the two is usually where the surprises live.
A remediation planning workshop.
Findings convert into a ranked plan in a working session with the teams who will execute it. Each item leaves the room with an owner, an effort estimate, and a position in the sequence.
Platforms we work on
Assessment and design work stays product neutral. We assess and design against the platforms we deliver on, so the recommendation is grounded in what we can actually implement.
Identity Governance
SailPoint | Microsoft | Saviynt
Access Management
Ping Identity | Microsoft | ForgeRock | Okta
Privileged Access
CyberArk | BeyondTrust | Delinea
Accelerators we bring to this work
IAM Mirror.
A visibility layer that mirrors identity, access and configuration state across the estate into one current view, so drift shows up before an audit finds it.
IRiS.
Correlates identity signals across the estate into a continuously updated risk score per identity.
How the engagement runs
Scoping, week one
Systems in scope, data sources, and access for the assessment team get agreed. Read-only credentials are provisioned and the HR extract is arranged.
Collection and analysis, weeks one to three
Automated collection runs across the agreed systems, followed by reconciliation and analysis. Interim findings get shared as they stabilise, so nothing in the final report is a surprise.
Validation, week three
Draft findings get reviewed with system owners to remove false positives and attach context that raw data cannot supply, such as an account that looks dormant but backs a quarterly process.
Remediation workshop and handover, week four
The prioritised plan gets built with the delivery teams, and the inventory, findings register, and plan hand over in maintainable form.
Who does the work
A Actionable Advisory Assessments engagement runs with a lead consultant or architect owning the approach, supported by engineers and analysts sized to the scope. The lead stays on the engagement from start through handover. Work is delivered from our teams in India, the United States and Canada, with the split set by client timezone and any data residency requirements.
What the client side need to bring.
The engagement needs a sponsor with authority over identity, read-only technical access arranged through system owners, and short validation sessions with the teams that own the largest systems. Total organisational time is measured in hours, not weeks: most of the effort sits with the assessment team, and the internal load concentrates in the validation and workshop stages.
What the engagement leaves behind
An entitlement inventory the internal team can maintain
Delivered in a structured, refreshable format rather than a static document, so the next review updates it instead of starting over.
A ranked remediation list with named owners
Every finding carries severity, evidence, an accountable owner, and an effort estimate, which is what turns a report into a program.
A baseline for measurement.
The next assessment, or the next audit, measures against this one. Progress becomes demonstrable instead of anecdotal.
How success gets measured
Unknowns converted into inventory.
The share of accounts reconciled to an owner, a service, or a documented decision is the primary measure. The number that matters is how little remains unexplained.
Remediation items closed after ninety days.
An assessment succeeds when the plan moves. Tracking closure at ninety days separates an actionable assessment from a well-formatted one.
Reduction at the next audit
ewer access findings in the following audit cycle is the external validation that the risk actually moved.
Pitfalls this approach avoids
The findings dump.
Assessments that end in a long report without owners produce awareness, not change. The workshop and ownership model exist to prevent exactly this ending.
Scope sprawl mid-assessment.
Adding systems mid-flight dilutes depth everywhere. Scope stays fixed; systems that surface late enter the follow-up list with their own timeline.
False-positive fatigue.
Raw data flags accounts that look dormant but back real processes. The validation stage exists so the remediation list starts credible, because one wrong deletion recommendation costs the whole list its authority.
Frequently ask questions
What is an access assessment?
A point-in-time review of who holds access to which systems, how that access was granted, and where it creates risk, delivered with a prioritised remediation plan.
How long does it take?
Typically two to four weeks depending on the number of systems in scope and the quality of available data sources.
What access does the assessment team need?
Read-only access to directories and target systems, plus an HR extract for reconciliation. No changes are made to any system during the assessment.
Does the assessment disrupt operations?
No. Collection is read-only and scheduled around system owners. The only operational demand is interview and validation time from a small set of stakeholders.
What happens after the assessment?
The remediation plan can be executed by internal teams, supported through follow-on engagements, or fed into an IGA program as its opening baseline. The assessment stands alone either way.
Can the assessment be repeated internally?
Yes, and it should be. The inventory format and method hand over, so the internal team can re-run comparisons annually and measure drift instead of mapping it again from zero.
Related services
IAM Strategic Roadmap.
A sequenced IAM plan tied to risk, not licence renewals.
IAM Maturity Assessment.
Know where the IAM program stands, and what next level costs.
IAM Tech Selection.
Pick the platform that fits, with evidence to back the choice.
Active Directory Identity Assessment.
Fifteen years of AD growth, mapped and made fixable.
IAM Compliance Alignment.
IAM controls mapped to the frameworks auditors test against.
Where to start
The practical first step is a scoping conversation: which systems, which data sources, and which audit or project deadline the assessment should serve. From there, scope and timeline get fixed in writing before any collection begins.