IAM

The discipline of managing digital identities and their access rights.

Identity and access management is the discipline of governing who and what can access resources, spanning identity proofing, authentication, authorization, and the full account lifecycle of provisioning and deprovisioning. It enforces least privilege and separation of duties and centralizes control through directories, single sign on, and federation. It matters because compromised or excessive access drives many breaches. A common pitfall is privilege creep, where users accumulate rights across role changes, which periodic access reviews and recertification are meant to catch.