Take the Pain out of Periodic Access Reviews with Approva’s Certification Manager
Posted on September 30th, 2008 by Steve Elliott »Permalink
We are very proud to be officially launching Certification Manager, which automates the end-to-end process for reviewing existing controls across ERP systems and other sensitive applications. We designed Certification Manager to make periodic reviews of controls a straightforward exercise by automating the review and approval process for all key controls and providing an audit trail that serves as evidence for external auditors.
Certification Manager leverages Microsoft technology to make the product truly extensible and generic – unlike other products in the marketplace – so that it can be used for everything from identifying and managing user access roles to evaluating access to network drives, no matter the ERP system or business function. Because Certification Manager’s embedded Windows Workflow foundation provides a great variety of configurable options for customers, enabling them to customize their own sophisticated routings and scenarios simply by building on an existing foundation – no coding is required. Because of this extensibility, customers will not only be able to certify role assignments, rule book ownership, exclusions, connections, active directory assignments and the like, but they can certify any business process they desire using the process wizard.
On the database side, we’ve incorporated SQL Server Integration Services that enable users to easily extract data, providing robust data-control and data-handling. This too is highly extensible, so that it can be scaled and customized within the User Interface, without the need to write code or hire consultants.
And then there’s the feature that’s got our beta customers giving rave reviews – Certification Manager’s full integration with Approva BizRights. Where other certification products provide only basic information about which user has which access, Certification Manager provides data that helps users make decisions on roles from within the system, based on the information it extracts from our controls and risk systems. So instead of static data on who has access to what, Certification Manger provides visibility about user access along with information on when and how specific individuals have used their access in the past and what other risks exist in the environment. With this additional information, users can manage role assignments during the certification process, something no one else is able to offer.
So far, the reactions from customers have been very positive – even more than we’d anticipated, in fact. The time savings that Certification Manager users are enjoying now that they’re spared manual certifications are real and impressive – and the ROI in terms of saved bandwidth and other resources is clear. One of our beta customers projects that they will save weeks of valuable personnel time by implementing Certification Manager and be able to perform their periodic audits more frequently and for more systems than before.
The release of Certification Manager is also a significant milestone in Approva’s software development lifecycle. Thanks to earlier investments in a reusable platform that works across our products, we were able to keep the development cycle on this project to less than 4 months – a testament not only to the platform, but to our remarkable team.
But that’s enough from me. You’ll be hearing more this week about the pain points that Certification Manager can help solve, and in the meantime, you can read the official announcement on Approva’s Certification Manager here. You’re also invited to join this afternoon’s webcast on Certification Manager, taking place at 1 PM EST.
Tags: Certification Manager, Approva, user access
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