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Spring Clean Your Access Management

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Written by

Maile McCarthy

Contributing Writer and Illustrator

StrongDM

Last updated on:

February 7, 2023

Reading time:

1 minutes

Contents

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It’s that time of year—rain is falling, flowers are blooming. Spring is in the air. As your thoughts turn toward spring cleaning your home (did someone say pressure-washer?), it’s also a good time to spring clean your access management.

The following tools and resources will help you declutter your accounts, improve existing processes, and establish new habits to keep your access clean and tidy all year long.

Organize Your Access Inventory

Over time, infrastructure access can become a labyrinth full of twists and turns and forgotten corners. It’s time to clear away the cobwebs. Begin with a detailed inspection of your current inventory. Have you removed access from all terminated employees? What about former vendors and contractors?

Consider current employees as well. Do team members who have changed roles need the same access to critical systems? Have you revoked temporary access that is no longer required? When was the last time you aligned roles to access needs?

Additionally, if you’re using a PAM tool, now is a great time for an audit.

Here are some resources to get you organized:

Revitalize Your Processes

After you’ve confirmed that access to systems looks good, it’s time to

review your existing processes.

Examine your methods for onboarding and offboarding. Consider what’s working well and what could use an upgrade. Gather input from all relevant departments to determine which systems and processes would benefit from simplified access.

Here are some resources to help you clean up your techniques:

Brush Up on the Basics

Innovation is just as important as elbow grease when it comes to spring cleaning. Now is a great time to uncover what’s new in the space and brush up on the basics.

Take some time to review the latest best practices, tools, and information available. You may be surprised by what you discover.

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Want to make spring cleaning your access a little lighter next year? StrongDM can help your team establish healthy access habits. Check out Getting Started: Role & Access Discovery to begin spring cleaning your access today.

Next Steps

StrongDM unifies access management across databases, servers, clusters, and more—for IT, security, and DevOps teams.

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About the Author

Maile McCarthy, Contributing Writer and Illustrator, has a passion for helping people bring their ideas to life through web and book illustration, writing, and animation. In recent years, her work has focused on researching the context and differentiation of technical products and relaying that understanding through appealing and vibrant language and images. She holds a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of California, Berkeley. To contact Maile, visit her on LinkedIn.

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