Introduction

In today’s increasingly complex regulatory landscape, identity governance is not just a best practice—it’s a necessity. Whether your organization is preparing for a Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) 404 controls audit, undergoing a SOC compliance review, or ensuring adherence to healthcare regulations like HIPAA and HiTRUST, having a powerful and centralized reporting system for identity data is key. Effective identity governance reporting saves time (and sanity) for burdened IT and Audit teams partnering to get work done.

Unfortunately, many organizations struggle with inadequate reporting tools, starting with Excel. Common pain points include difficulty in tracking changes over time, inability to easily share reports with auditors, and incomplete data coverage that leaves critical gaps in compliance documentation.  These gaps become a burden on Audit and IT teams, who are left manually creating even more Excel “spreadsheets of doom” to piece together what’s required. Even with this extra effort, there’s still failed audits.

This blog explores how advanced reporting capabilities, like those offered by Clarity Security, can streamline the audit process and ensure compliance across multiple regulatory frameworks. We’ll dive into the specific features that make Clarity’s reporting system stand out—such as version control for audit reports, the ability to export and re-download reports, and comprehensive data reporting. Through the lens of real-world audit scenarios, we’ll demonstrate how these capabilities can enhance your organization’s ability to meet regulatory demands with confidence.

Key Reporting Capabilities

Identity governance systems must incorporate three essential reporting capabilities:

1. Version control for audit-specific reports

Audits are not single-point-in-time events, more often involving multiple rounds of review and remediation. A robust reporting system should allow organizations to save different versions of reports tied to specific audits for specific timeframes. This feature enables teams to track progress, document changes, and maintain a clear audit trail throughout the compliance process. 

For instance, during a SOX 404 audit, management may need to provide historical data showing how internal controls over financial reporting have been adjusted or improved over time. By utilizing Clarity’s version control, teams can effortlessly retrieve earlier report versions, making it simple to demonstrate compliance changes and updates to auditors. This not only aids in the audit process but also supports transparency and accountability in financial reporting.

2. Flexible export options

The ability to export reports to CSV format and download the same output multiple times is crucial for both internal review and external audit submission. This flexibility allows organizations to manipulate data as needed, share information securely with auditors, and maintain local copies for record-keeping purposes.

Imagine a HIPAA audit scenario where an organization needs to provide recurring access review reports to auditors. With Clarity, these reports can be exported and securely shared with auditors, who may need to review them multiple times during the audit process. This capability reduces the risk of delays or discrepancies in providing necessary documentation.

3. Comprehensive Data Coverage

An effective identity governance reporting system must provide visibility into every piece of data within the system. This includes user accounts, access rights, role assignments, policy implementations, and historical changes. Comprehensive coverage ensures that no aspect of identity governance is overlooked during audits and enables organizations to respond quickly and accurately to auditor requests.

For example, in a SOC audit, it’s essential to identify and mitigate risks associated with high-privilege accounts. Clarity’s reporting system allows auditors to scrutinize detailed reports on these accounts, including who has access, what actions they have performed, and how their access aligns with the organization’s overall security policies or even the specific items in the in-progress access reviews. This level of detail not only helps in meeting compliance requirements but also provides insights that can drive continuous improvement in identity governance practices.

By incorporating these key capabilities, organizations can transform their approach to compliance audits. Instead of scrambling to collect and present data from multiple systems and chasing application owners for exports, teams can focus on analyzing results, addressing issues, and continuously improving their identity governance practices.

How can Clarity help your audits?

Clarity Security has taken the philosophy of “it’s your data” to our reporting.  Every aspect of our system provides a matched report that can be versioned, and exported. This means that many of the “ad-hoc” data requests that creep up from internal (or external) audit teams can be handled in seconds.  

We provide a set of key reports that you can fine tune to your requirements:

You can filter on things like:
Tags
Applications
Privileged Access
Timeframes
Type of activity / change

Here’s some example reports you might find exceptionally useful:

“State of Access”

Roll back the clock to any point in time, report on the access in that application at that time.  Ever been asked “hey what did access look like when our audit started” or “what access did we have before the security incident?”  This is the report for you.

“Joiner / Movers / Leavers”

Easily show “who joined the organization” or “who was terminated” 

Orphan Accounts

Pick a system of truth, and report on all user accounts that are “inactive” in your system of truth, but “active” in a downstream system.  Data cleanup ensues. 

Identity Change Logs 

Export any change to any property of any identity.  

Conclusion: 

Regardless of your audit type, there's no denying that having the right tools for the job is essential to getting them not only done, but done well. As far as access reporting goes, we know this boils down to three key capabilities: Version control for audit-specific reports, flexible export options, and comprehensive data coverage. If you lack version control, you can't track progress, document changes, or a clear audit trail over time. Without flexible export options, a team is forced to find time-consuming and usually labor-intensive work-arounds to get the data where it needs to go in the format it needs to be delivered in. And, without the comprehensive coverage, you wind up with ungoverned shadow access that not only poses a security threat, but can also leave you in violation of compliance requirements. Clarity is the IGA platform built with the reporting capabilities to tackle each of these– and more. Schedule a demo to see how it can help your organization.