Lifecycle Management Isn’t Just Provisioning

If you think identity lifecycle management is just about creating and deactivating user accounts, you’re playing checkers in a chess game.

Lifecycle management is the heartbeat of your identity program. It’s the engine that keeps access aligned to a user’s role, responsibilities, and risk over time—not just on day one and day done.

The Full Identity Lifecycle (Not Just Provisioning)

A mature lifecycle process includes:

• Onboarding: Creating accounts and assigning base access based on role, not guesswork.

• Changes (aka Movers): Promotions, transfers, temp assignments—all of which require access changes in real time, not weeks later.

• Leave of Absence: A user is gone, but not gone. Should they keep email? VPN? This is where most orgs drop the ball.

• Offboarding: It’s not just about disabling the AD account—it’s about pulling every backdoor, shared secret, and shadow entitlement.

If you don’t handle all these phases well, you’re introducing gaps. Gaps mean risk. And those risks don’t always show up in audit—they show up when something breaks, or someone abuses stale access.

The Hidden Dangers Between Lifecycle Events

The biggest risk isn’t in the provisioning itself—it’s in what happens between lifecycle triggers:

• The user transferred, but no one notified IAM.

• The contractor’s end date passed, but their access still works.

• A VP went on leave, and their exec assistant is still logging in as them.

These aren’t edge cases. They’re daily realities. And they happen when lifecycle is treated like a static workflow instead of a living process.

So how do you stay ahead of lifecycle events? You have to start by getting good at detecting change.

That means:

• Establishing a clear data model that defines what events matter: new hires, department transfers, job changes, contract extensions, terminations, etc.

• Mapping those events to identity-relevant actions: Should access change? Be removed? Require review?

• Integrating with authoritative sources like your HRIS, vendor management system, or student information system—and making sure those systems actually send timely, reliable data.

• Building strong communication channels with HR and business partners so lifecycle events don’t get missed. You don’t need more tooling—you need better alignment.

A good lifecycle process doesn’t just respond to change. It anticipates it. Because if you're waiting for someone to open a ticket, you've already lost.

What Good Lifecycle Management Looks Like

It’s not just tickets and connectors. It’s:

• Integration with authoritative sources: Your HRIS should be your IAM program’s best friend¹. It needs to send timely updates when people join, leave, or change roles.

• Event-driven architecture: Your system should respond to lifecycle changes as they happen, not rely on periodic batch jobs or manual data pulls.

• Well-defined rules and policies: Role-based access should be grounded in a clear, agreed-upon entitlement catalog. Who gets what, why, and when should be baked into the process—not improvised per request.

• Time-bound and dynamic access: Not every access should last forever. Support temporary access, project-based entitlements, and set expiration rules where appropriate.

• Lifecycle ownership clarity: Someone should always be accountable for approving, certifying, or revoking access. Without clear ownership, lifecycle breaks down.

• Exception handling and escalation paths: You need guardrails and override lanes. Don’t break the business when the process doesn’t fit—but don’t let exceptions become the rule either.

• Monitoring and reporting: Who has access outside their role? Where are lifecycle failures happening? Build dashboards that help you answer these questions weekly—not just during an audit scramble.

Final Thoughts: Lifecycle is the Foundation

Everything else in IAM—governance, Zero Trust, access reviews, risk-based controls—relies on good lifecycle hygiene.

If you don’t get this right, everything else becomes reactive. Worse yet, your entire deployment becomes more complicated. Without solid lifecycle foundations, you end up writing custom code and manual workflows to handle exceptions and work around fundamental lifecycle gaps. And every workaround you add increases complexity, operational overhead, and risk.

Provisioning is just the start. Lifecycle is the journey. Get lifecycle right, and everything else gets easier. Get it wrong, and every IAM initiative you undertake becomes an uphill battle.