Verifying and comparing entity assignments is one of the key aspects for maintaining and improving cyber security from an IAM perspective. It can give you insights on how certain departments function, how diverse they are, but also whether accesses are kept up to date, if resources are given back as part of the leaver process, etc.

This article will show you how you can compare any entity type in Elimity and verify their assignments to another entity type.

You can navigate to the peer review window by clicking on Peer review in the side menu of Elimity.

Selecting the first entity type

To start the peer review, you first need to think about what exactly you want to compare. Keep in mind that this needs to be two-fold! For example: I want to compare the access groups of the team members of a specific department. In this example, you can clearly identify two different entity types: Access groups and team members of a specific department. 

Typically, what you want to compare will be in the right hand table of the peer review (2), as those entities will be in the columns of the peer review, resulting in an easy overview of commonalities, but also of exceptions, based on percentages.

That means the entities we are comparing to one another are in the left table (1).

Peer review overview

To add these, you need to select the correct entity type of the correct source in the dropdownlist (1)(2) on the peer review page.

Add entities

Once you have selected the correct entity types, it is time to populate the tables with the correct entities. You can choose to add these one by one, by entering the name of the entity and selecting it from the list (3).

Adding entities manually

Of course, if you do not know who exactly to add, or you have a lot of entities in scope, adding multiple at once based on a filter sounds like the better choice. Elimity provides two options to add multiple entities in one go (4):

1. From query
2. Manually

Options to add entities

Adding multiple entities from a query, means you already created a stored query yielding the expected results. Simply select From query, select your stored query from the list and the results will automatically be added to the table.

If you don’t have a stored query ready yet or you do not require to keep track of this bundle of entities, you can still manually filter out all the entities you want to include in the peer review. Click Manually in the dropdown and create your filter in the data table. Once done, press Add X to add the results to the corresponding table of the peer review.

Add entities through a filter

As soon as both tables are populated, you can consult the result of the peer review in the table below. However, if there are still entities you would like to add, you can do that in the same manner, both one-by-one (3) as multiple at once (4). Additionally, you can switch both tables by pressing the double arrow (5) button. You can also delete all entries in a table (6), should you have accidentally added the wrong entities.

Results

Peer review matrix

This view is constructed as a matrix, where you have your first entity type (1) as the rows and the second (2) as columns. By default, the names will be shown, but if you want to change the headers of the rows or the columns, you can click the cogwheel (3) and choose a different attribute to display. You can also change the way the entities are sorted, which are by default sorted on their assignment ratio, from highest to lowest.

The Xs indicate the assignments between the different entity types. In the example above you can see that Daisy Mainil has been assigned DL All Users FR, because there is an X in the corresponding square. If you want to know more about the assigned entity, you can click the information icon to show all attributes of that entity.

Now that you have the peer review ready, you can download (4) this view into an excel version or create an access review (5).

Elimity also offers a view which lists the assignment ratio of the second entity type. This can quickly give you a glance of which entity has been assigned the most. To view the assignment ratio of the other entity type, you can always switch sides by pressing the double arrow button at the top. This will impact the results table as well, but can be switched around just as quickly.

Peer review ratio tables

And finally, you can also consult the details of every entity included in the peer review in the final two tables.