Identity and Access Visibility: Understanding Who Has Access to What, How, and with Which Permissions

In organizations, users’ roles, responsibilities, and the systems they use change over time. These changes require their access to be continuously updated as well. As new applications, roles, groups, and permissions are introduced, the access structure becomes more complex. Over time, it may become difficult to track who has access to which system, application, or resource.

One of the main reasons for this complexity is that access permissions are granted to users in different ways. A permission may be assigned directly to a user, or it may come through a group the user belongs to or a role the user has. Therefore, simply listing assigned permissions is not sufficient to understand the access a user actually has.

Effective access visibility should be able to show which resources a user can access, how this access is established, and the scope of the access together. This allows teams to understand complex access relationships more easily and identify unnecessary or potentially risky permissions more quickly.

Securify Identity makes the relationships between users, roles, groups, applications, and permissions visible, making this structure easier to understand. In this way, the sources of access become visible; administrators can track indirect permission dependencies and quickly identify unnecessary, incorrect, or risky access.

What Is Identity Visibility?

Identity visibility is the ability to clearly see the relationships between users, accounts, groups, roles, permissions, applications, and other enterprise resources, and to understand how access is established.

Good identity visibility is not limited to showing which system a user can access; it also reveals the source, scope, and potential risks associated with the access the user has. It enables the following questions to be answered easily:

• Through which role or group did the user obtain this access?

• Was the permission assigned directly to the user, or did it come through a role hierarchy?

• Does the user’s current role and responsibilities still require this access?

• Are there unnecessary permissions in critical systems?

• Are there permissions that create risk from a Segregation of Duties (SoD) perspective?

  
  

Trying to obtain the answers to these questions one by one from different systems and access lists can be quite difficult, especially in large and complex environments. A centralized Identity and Access Management (IAM) platform brings together identity and access data from different sources, helping the organization view its access structure more holistically. This allows teams to more easily evaluate not only existing access, but also how that access was established and where it may create risk.

Moving Beyond the Question “Who Has Access?”

Traditional access reports mostly list the permissions users have. Although this information is important for auditing and reporting, it does not always show how the access was established.

For example, suppose a user has approval permission in an ERP system. This permission may not have been assigned directly to the user. The access may also have been granted through a relationship such as:

User → Finance Group → Finance Manager Role → ERP Approval Permission

In this case, the information that the user has ERP approval permission is correct. However, this information alone is not sufficient to understand the source of the access. It should also be possible to see through which group, role, or relationship the permission was established.

This visibility becomes particularly important when access needs to be reviewed or removed. When evaluating a permission, it is necessary to look not only at the final access, but also at the group and role relationships that created this access.

In environments where users are associated with many applications, groups, roles, and permissions, manually tracking these connections is quite difficult. On the other hand, in such large environments, being able to holistically see which resources a user can access and through which paths that access is established becomes even more important.

Why Is Access Visibility Important?

Access visibility enables organizations not only to see existing permissions, but also to evaluate whether those permissions are still necessary and appropriate. As users’ roles, departments, or responsibilities change, some access granted in the past may no longer be valid. Over time, the accumulation of permissions from different roles may also cause a user to have broader access than they need. This may create serious security risks.

It is not always easy to identify such situations by looking only at user and permission lists. Evaluating access together with user, role, group, and application relationships makes it easier to identify unnecessary permissions, risky access combinations, and access that needs to be reviewed.

This visibility also provides a stronger foundation for identity governance processes such as access reviews, role management, SoD controls, and audits. Teams can make better decisions by seeing not only which access exists, but also the context in which the access is evaluated.

Identity Intelligence: From Visibility to Meaningful Insight

Making identity and access data visible is an important step. However, as the access structure grows, simply seeing existing access may not be enough. It also becomes important to identify which users, accounts, or permissions need to be examined more closely.

An account that has not been used for a long time, a user record with no identified owner, or a user with broader permissions than needed can easily be overlooked within large volumes of access data. Therefore, teams need to be able to quickly identify situations that require attention.

Securify Identity’s AI-Powered Identity Intelligence VISEE capability helps evaluate identity and access data from this perspective. It supports making dormant, orphaned, overprivileged, or accounts that need to be reviewed from a risk perspective more visible.

This allows security and IT teams to focus more quickly on accounts that require attention instead of reviewing large numbers of user and permission records one by one. This also makes it easier to make more controlled and informed decisions in Access Review and other identity governance processes.

User Lifecycle and Keeping Access Up to Date

One of the main reasons the access structure becomes more complex over time is that users’ roles within the organization continuously change. When an employee joins the organization, they need certain access; over time, they may change departments, be promoted, work on different projects, or take on new responsibilities. Each change may result in changes to roles and the addition of new permissions.

The problem arises when old access is not reviewed in the same way while new access is being defined. When permissions that the user no longer needs are not removed, unnecessary or excessively broad access may develop over time.

For this reason, identity visibility should not be considered only as a static structure that shows existing access. It should also be possible to track how users’ access changes together with changes in their position within the organization.

Securify Identity’s Advanced Lifecycle Management capabilities support the centralized and automated management of processes such as user creation, role and group assignment, attribute updates, permission revocation, and identity deletion. This makes it easier to keep users’ access aligned with their current roles and responsibilities.

In particular, being able to easily answer questions such as “Have all access rights of a user who left the organization been removed?” or “Does an employee who changed departments continue to use their old permissions?” demonstrates why lifecycle management and identity visibility need to be addressed together.

Why Is Context Important in the Access Review Process?

The purpose of Access Review and Certification processes is to evaluate whether the permissions granted to users are still necessary and appropriate. However, presenting the decision-maker with only a long list of technical permission names may make it difficult to perform a sound evaluation.

For access to be approved or removed, the permission should be evaluated not on its own, but together with its context. Who the user is, whether the user’s current role requires this access, whether the permission comes directly or through a role or group, whether the account is active, and whether the relevant access creates risk together with other permissions are all important in this evaluation.

The following contexts are important when approving or removing access:

Subject Reviewed	Question That Needs to Be Answered
User	Who is the user who has this access?
Job Role	Does the user’s current role require this access?
Access Path	Through which role, group, or permission relationships does the user reach the relevant resource?
Account Status	Is the relevant account active or inactive?
Risk	Does this permission create risk on its own or together with other access?

Access Graphs and Identity Intelligence provide two different visibility layers that complement each other at this point. While Access Graphs make it easier to understand through which relationships a permission was established, Identity Intelligence helps make accounts and access that require attention easier to identify.

In this way, access review processes go beyond being only a periodic approval check and turn into a governance process in which more informed access decisions are made.

Making Segregation of Duties Risks Visible

Segregation of Duties (SoD) aims to prevent permissions that may create risk when combined in critical business processes from accumulating on the same user without control. For example, allowing a user both to create a supplier record and to approve a payment to the same supplier may create a significant control risk for the organization.

Securify Identity addresses SoD controls together with identity and access visibility, helping the permissions users have and potential Segregation of Duties violations to be evaluated more holistically. This allows teams to examine risky permission combinations while taking the entire access structure into account.

Identity Visibility and Zero Trust

In the Zero Trust approach, access is not a right that is granted once and then assumed to remain continuously valid. The user’s role, permissions, and need for access may change over time. Therefore, access needs to be evaluated according to current conditions.

For this, organizations first need to be able to see who can access which resources, how this access was established, and whether it is still necessary. In an environment where the access structure is not sufficiently visible, identifying unnecessary permissions and effectively applying the Least Privilege principle also becomes more difficult.

Identity visibility creates the foundation required by the Zero Trust approach by making the existing access structure understandable. This allows access to be evaluated not only based on permissions granted in the past, but also according to the user’s current role and needs.

What Should You Look for in Terms of Identity Visibility When Choosing an IAM Platform?

When evaluating an IAM or Identity Governance platform, technical features are of course important. However, how clearly the platform can show you the access structure within the organization is at least as important as the number of integrations or supported authentication methods.

For this reason, the following questions should be considered in particular during the evaluation:

Is indirect access visible?

A permission is not always assigned directly to a user. Access established through group memberships, roles, and role hierarchies should also be visible. This makes it possible to clearly understand through which path a user accesses a specific resource.

Can you distinguish dormant, orphaned, or overprivileged accounts?

Dormant, orphaned, overprivileged, or accounts that need to be reviewed from a risk perspective should not get lost among hundreds of users and permissions. Making such situations more visible makes it easier for teams to focus more quickly on areas that require review.

Are access decisions supported with sufficient information?

Seeing only the permission name is not sufficient to approve or remove access. The decision-maker should also be able to see the user’s current role, the source of the access, and whether this access is still necessary today.

Can risky permission combinations be seen?

The permissions a user has may not create a problem when considered individually; however, when evaluated together, they may create an SoD violation or another access risk. Therefore, the platform should make it possible to evaluate permissions not only separately, but also within the user’s overall access structure.

How Does Securify Identity Support Identity Visibility?

Securify Identity brings identity management, authentication, identity governance, and access management capabilities together under an AI-Powered Converged Identity Platform.

The platform’s key capabilities in terms of identity visibility include:

Access Graphs and Access Paths: Enable the relationships between users, roles, groups, applications, and permissions to be seen more clearly.

Access Review and Certification: Support the evaluation of whether existing access is still necessary and appropriate.

Segregation of Duties (SoD) and Risk Assessment: Help identify permission combinations that may create risk.

AI-Powered Identity Intelligence (VISEE): Supports easier identification of dormant, orphaned, overprivileged, or other accounts that need to be reviewed.

Role Hierarchy: Makes it easier to understand through which role relationships an access was established.

Advanced User Lifecycle Management: Supports keeping users’ access up to date as their roles and responsibilities change. Addressing these capabilities within the same platform prevents access from being viewed only as a user-permission match. The user’s role, group memberships, how the access was established, and related risks can be evaluated together.

Conclusion

As organizations’ identity and access structures grow, the main challenge is not collecting more access data, but being able to see existing data as a meaningful whole.

Knowing which system or resource a user can access is an important starting point. However, strong identity visibility also requires understanding how the access was established, which roles or relationships it comes from, whether it is still necessary, and whether it brings any risk with it.

Securify Identity brings identity management and governance capabilities together on the same platform, helping organizations make complex access relationships more understandable and evaluate access decisions with greater context.

To examine the relationships between users, roles, permissions, and systems within your organization more closely, you can explore the Securify Identity IAM Platform or request a demo.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is identity visibility?

Identity visibility is the ability to see and understand access relationships between users, accounts, groups, roles, permissions, and applications. The purpose is not only to see that access exists, but also to explain how this access was established and through which relationships it was granted.

What is the difference between an Access Graph and a standard access report?

Standard access reports generally list the permissions users have. An Access Graph, on the other hand, shows the connections between the user, group, role, permission, and application together, making it easier to understand through which path the access was established.

Can Role Hierarchy create indirect access?

Yes. A user may have a permission that was not assigned directly to them through a role, group, or role hierarchy. Therefore, when evaluating the actual access structure, it is necessary to look not only at direct assignments, but at all relationships that create the access.

What does VISEE do?

VISEE is Securify Identity’s AI-Powered Identity Intelligence capability. It helps dormant, orphaned, overprivileged, or accounts that need to be reviewed from a risk perspective be identified more easily and supports the evaluation of identity data within a broader risk context.

How does identity visibility support Access Review processes?

It enables the person evaluating the access to see not only the permission name, but also through which role or group this access was established and how closely it relates to the user’s current role. This allows approval or removal decisions to be made with broader context.