Identity Lifecycle: Onboarding, Changes and Offboarding
Managing identities from hiring to departure
The identity lifecycle covers every stage a digital account goes through within an organization, from its creation when someone joins, through permission changes when they switch roles or departments, to its deactivation when the person leaves the company. Managing this cycle well matters in practice because most identity risks don't come from sophisticated attacks but from operational oversights, such as former employees' accounts that were never disabled or permissions accumulated from previous roles that an employee never lost when changing areas, a phenomenon known as privilege creep. A concrete example is an employee who moves from finance to marketing and keeps access to the accounting system for months because nobody reviewed or revoked those permissions, leaving an open door with no business justification.