Anyone work in access management?

I have an upcoming interview for an entry-level access management role within a large organization. I am very new to IT (no professional experience) but I have worked in roles that required customer service and learning various software systems/ Excel. I feel extremely unqualified for this job and was hoping anyone who has experience in this area can provide some insight on what to expect?

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NetworkNewb

I would guess you would be setting up and making to changes to accounts all day. Whether that be in Active Directory or in their Applications. Definitely feel anyone could do these kind of roles, very remedial work and not technical. Being a large org I would guess you would be pretty much following a set of steps to setup accounts. But than again, I'm just guessing.

markulous

My guess is the same as networknewb. Do you have a job description to go off of?

Node Man

Sounds like resetting folks passwords. Also sounds like a doorway into IT

amicmanzo

Node Man wrote: »

Sounds like resetting folks passwords. Also sounds like a doorway into IT

I kind of agree. Access Management just sounds fancy for trouble call ticket responder for locked out accounts

636-555-3226

Access management for me means administering share permissions, maybe user accounts. If that's the case, you can do some reconnaissance via youtube re: share & ntfs permissions:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=share+permissions

zxcvbnm2

Thanks for all the responses! The job description makes it sound like an intermediary between HR and IT departments.

TheFORCE

I'd like to give my 2 cent on this thread and say that Access Management aka IAM is not what it used to be 4-5 years ago. Which is what the previous posts are describing. There has been a lot of progress in IAM with many automated solutions coming to the market. The time where you had a team of 6-10 people doing IAM is gone, if your company is still operating that way, you are doing wrong and you should look into acquiring an IAM solution. Not only for the cost savings, because you will only need maybe 1/3 of the people, but also for compliance reasons. Access Management does not involve only resting passwords, it involves doing user certifications, audits, account creation, creation of workflows, maintenance of privilege accounts, data classification, share permissions, user behavior, single-sign on implementation, multi-factor authentication etc.

Some of the big players in the area.
SecZetta
https://www.varonis.com/products/
https://www.coresecurity.com/iam-products
https://www.pingidentity.com/en/products/pingfederate.html

If you are still doing user re-certs manually, you are doing it wrong again. What about third party accounts, consultants, temps, vendors etc. There are IAM solutions that take care of that, if you are a big corporation, you are probably using federated identities, if not, then you still are using an automated IAM solution.

My point is, you dont know what that job description entails. I have worked with these solutions and have implemented a few, the knowledge you need to have is not how to reset a password. You need to know some SQL, you need to understand logic workflow, you need some server administration knowledge, scheduling of sync jobs, troubleshooting services etc. This is the perfect job for anyone wanting to get into GRC as the next level. Access Management has been automated in so many ways, this should be your next initivate for anyone not having an automated IAM solution.

If you post the job description i can give you more input.

NetworkNewb

My company has been looking at IAM solutions, have had a few come in and do demonstrations. and while they look amazing. The cost is crazy. We have 2 people on my team doing the manual access management at all times and the cost of IAM solution would be about 4 times one's salary. Just doesn't make sense money wise unfortunately.

TheFORCE

NetworkNewb wrote: »

My company has been looking at IAM solutions, have had a few come in and do demonstrations. and while they look amazing. The cost is crazy. We have 2 people on my team doing the manual access management at all times and the cost of IAM solution would be about 4 times one's salary. Just doesn't make sense money wise unfortunately.

Whats the size of your company? Anything above 1000 users your need an IAM solution. Also, think about the other benefits in terms of time spend and time saved. If your network administrator or helpdesk is granting permissions on shares, you are wasting their time. You can setup a self service solution for that which will automate the entire process from request, to approvals, to access to certification to termination, complete cycle. Your employees will also be more satisfied when it takes just few seconds to get access to not only a folder but to applications they need access too. Your 2 people can just maintain the solution and make improvements making things easy and simple.

636-555-3226

5000 users here, no IAM. too expensive and not worth it. we have one FTE doing it all and he can keep up pretty well. Not ideal, and I would prefer an automated solution, but they're really expensive and really complex compared to my almost-entry-level guy doing while jamming out to his chiptune music

ImYourOnlyDJ

zxcvbnm2 wrote: »

I have an upcoming interview for an entry-level access management role within a large organization. I am very new to IT (no professional experience) but I have worked in roles that required customer service and learning various software systems/ Excel. I feel extremely unqualified for this job and was hoping anyone who has experience in this area can provide some insight on what to expect?

We had a guy that had zero IT experience land an access management role at my company. Steep learning curve at first but he caught on.

TheFORCE

636-555-3226 wrote: »

5000 users here, no IAM. too expensive and not worth it. we have one FTE doing it all and he can keep up pretty well. Not ideal, and I would prefer an automated solution, but they're really expensive and really complex compared to my almost-entry-level guy doing while jamming out to his chiptune music

I don't know if you are joking or if you are being serious man. If you are being serious you need to get the guy some help. Is he working 24/7 365 or something? 5000 users with 1 person managing access is crazy! Unless you only have 1 app with 1 access level then maybe it is possible.