About this interactive
The Identity and Access Management lesson is short, but its frame is the account life cycle, four stages that every account goes through.
Provisioning: the account is created and given the access its owner needs. A new employee, a contractor, an intern, or a service account for new software.
Maintaining: keeping the account working while its owner's job stays the same. Password resets, unlocking a locked-out account, re-enrolling multifactor on a new phone, renewing a certificate, rotating a service account's password.
Change management: the owner's role changes, so the access changes with it: a move to another department, a promotion, a transfer. The new access is added and the old access is removed. The lesson names this as the weakest area it sees, because the adding happens and the removing is forgotten, and access piles up.
De-provisioning: the account's reason to exist ends, so it is disabled or deleted. A person leaves, a contract ends, software is retired.
The tell between maintaining and change management: in maintenance the account keeps the same access; in change management what the account may reach changes.
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