Provisioning

Managing access to online accounts and other sensitive resources is a critical responsibility for anyone overseeing security in a business setting. Whether you're part of a growing startup or an established enterprise, understanding how to provision access – granting the right people the right level of access at the right time – is essential to protecting confidential data and maintaining operational efficiency. 

In this article you'll learn what provisioning mean, why it matters, and how tools like 1Password Enterprise Password Manager can help you implement secure, streamlined, and scalable access management across your organization.

What is provisioning?

Provisioning ensures people and systems have access to everything they need. It’s the process of creating, updating, and managing access to your infrastructure, data, and software. In a security context, that typically means granting sufficient and appropriate access – and nothing more – to users and service accounts so they can carry out their duties.

The opposite of provisioning is deprovisioning which is the process of revoking or reducing access to resources. In practice, IT and/or security professionals regularly perform a combination of provisioning and deprovisioning as teams and tooling change.

Why is provisioning important for security?

The principle of least privilege (PoLP) is one of the fundamental aspects of both security and provisioning. Following this principle allows you to minimize potential security and privacy risks like unauthorized access, data breaches, and insider threats. You can reduce risk by intentionally granting access to only the resources people need to do their jobs.

There are other benefits, too. A thoughtful, well-documented approach to provisioning will make it easier to monitor and audit your organization’s security and comply with industry regulations and security standards. Automated provisioning also improves efficiency and allows your IT team to focus on other important tasks.

How 1Password can help with provisioning

As an Owner or Administrator, you provision access to the 1Password password manager when you decide what people can do and see. In practice, that means determining the vaults and items people have access to.

If you manage a small business, you may provision things manually. If you’re a member of a larger organization on a 1Password Business plan, you can connect your identity provider to your 1Password account to automatically provision access by creating users and groups, and confirming password manager accounts. 

You can use 1Password SaaS Manager for efficient, automated, and auditable provisioning and deprovisioning of all your SaaS applications and licenses.