Account Management

Account management deals with the creating, maintaining, upgrading or downgrading, and deletion of user accounts. It is a process that requires great attention and that is often poorly handled in many corporations. A common practice is to have IT departments create accounts manually while giving the user more rights and permissions than is truly needed. This problem can be further compounded when employees leave or are fired and their accounts are not properly decommissioned. Account management products attempt to eliminate these issues.

Best case scenario

Ideally, when a new user account needs to be created, a request is created, perhaps by HR, and approved by the employee's manager. This approval may trigger the system to automatically set up the account with the requested permissions, or it may generate a ticket for IT. When a user needs elevated permissions, or an account needs to be removed, a similar workflow process is followed.

Automating this process eases the workload of network administrators, and prevents lapses in account management. Implementing account management software also allows for an audit trail to be created. And everyone loves making auditors happy!