Regulatory compliance isn’t just a box to check—it’s a constant, high-stakes consideration for nearly every organization. As data privacy regulations continue to evolve, compliance has become a core part of business planning rather than an afterthought. Falling short of security requirements can carry significant consequences, depending on the regulation and industry in question.
Potential impacts of regulatory noncompliance include:
- Increased Audit Risk. Some regulatory bodies may decide to audit an organization’s IT infrastructure and business practices if they discover that the business is noncompliant with certain data security regulations. Preparing for these audits can be a stressful and time-consuming task that detracts from the organization’s ability to make progress on their core business priorities.
- Noncompliance Fines. Some government regulations enforce fines and other penalties for noncompliance. For example, failure to comply with HIPAA standards can result in fines ranging from $141 to $2,134,831 per violation (source: HIPAA Journal).
- Reputational Damage. Failure to comply with government and industry regulations can harm a business’ reputation as news gets out about violations, fines, and potential data breaches. This, in turn, could drive away customers, slow recruitment efforts, and impact employee morale. The actual cost of reputational damage is difficult to estimate. However, this damage can be long-lasting and lead to significant reductions in revenue from lost business opportunities and lower productivity.
For many industry and government regulations, IAM can be a crucial aspect of compliance. How is IAM linked to regulatory compliance? Which IAM tools and services help you meet compliance requirements?
What is IAM?
IAM stands for “identity and access management,” a category that encompasses the technologies and services used to ensure only authorized users can access specific systems, applications, and data. A strong IAM strategy helps organizations verify identities, manage user privileges, and control access throughout the user lifecycle.
The demand for IAM solutions continues to grow rapidly—driven by rising security concerns, expanding regulatory requirements, and the widespread adoption of cloud computing. According to Fortune Business Insights, the global IAM market is projected to grow from $19.80 billion in 2024 to $61.74 billion by 2032, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.3%.
The momentum is being fueled not just by enterprise adoption, but also by the increasing pressure on small and mid-sized businesses to meet compliance standards and protect against evolving cyber threats. As organizations move more workloads to the cloud and adopt technologies like artificial intelligence and blockchain, IAM is becoming a critical foundation for managing access securely and efficiently.
In short: IAM isn’t just a security function—it’s a strategic business enabler that helps organizations stay compliant, reduce risk, and scale with confidence.
Regulatory Compliance and Identity Management (IdM)
As identity and access management becomes more deeply embedded in modern IT strategies, its role extends far beyond access control. For many organizations, it’s also a critical pillar of regulatory compliance. With data privacy regulations evolving and enforcement tightening, a well-implemented IAM strategy can help reduce audit risk, avoid penalties, and demonstrate accountability at every level.
Let’s take a closer look at how identity and access management supports compliance efforts—and what’s at stake when it’s not in place.
1. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act has several provisions where strong IAM solutions are critical for successful compliance.
First, and foremost, the HIPAA Privacy Rule requires “Covered Entities” (such as healthcare providers, health plans, healthcare clearinghouses, and their business associates) to ensure that “individuals’ health information is properly protected while allowing the flow of health information needed to provide and promote high-quality healthcare, and to protect the public’s health and well-being.”
Identity management plays a critical role in ensuring that only authorized users—and the individuals the health information pertains to—can access that information.
Second, the HIPAA Security Rule requires covered entities to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of all electronic personal health information (e-PHI) that they generate, receive, or maintain. Not only do organizations have to protect these files from illicit access—they have to make them available to the patient when it is requested, as well as to their authorized healthcare providers.
IAM helps ensure that individuals can easily access their personal health information on request. This can prevent accidental noncompliance with HIPAA regulations.
2. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
The European Union’s (EU’s) GDPR standard is specifically designed to help protect the rights of EU citizens (referred to as “data subjects” in the rule) to access and control the data about them that companies process, transmit, or store. While this regulation is specific to EU citizens, it can affect American businesses that routinely service customers from the EU—such as hotels, banks, or businesses located in major tourist destinations—and, consequently, store and process data about EU citizens.
There are several major provisions in GDPR which require businesses to have robust identity management solutions in place for compliance, including:
- Article 13. This article requires organizations to provide the data subject with a notification whenever their personal data is being collected. This notice needs to include the identity and contact details of the “controller,” (the entity processing the data) and the data protection officer (if there is one). To supply this information, it’s necessary to have a record of the controller’s and data protection officer’s identities and a means of updating their records as needed.
- Article 15. This article requires organizations to allow data subjects access to the data that has been collected about them. IAM is critical for meeting this requirement.
- Article 17. This article sets a “right to be forgotten” for data subjects. Essentially, the organization is required to delete data about a subject upon request unless they meet one or more exemption criteria such as compliance with other legal obligations requiring “processing by Union or Member State law to which the controller is subject.”
- Article 20. This article ensures that data subjects will have access to their personal data that has been collected. To ensure that only the data subject and authorized internal users are able to access that data, IAM solutions are a necessity.
These are just a few of the articles of GDPR where identity and access management can play a critical role.
3. The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)
The CCPA is a state regulation that follows in the footsteps of the EU’s GDPR rules. This regulation, like GDPR, establishes a few basic rights for consumers in regards to the management and storage of their personal data:
- The right to know what personal data a business has collected and how it will be used/shared.
- The right to delete personal information.
- The right to opt-out of the sale of personal information.
- The right to non-discrimination for exercising their CCPA rights.
These provisions are similar to the data subject bill of rights, and IAM solutions will be equally valuable for compliance with CCPA.
IAM Services That Can Help Increase Data Safety
The regulations listed in the above section are only a few of the compliance standards that businesses need to meet. However, it should be noted that IAM is an integral part of virtually any cybersecurity standard that requires an organization to protect customer data from illicit access.
There are a variety of IAM services that can help organizations meet their compliance goals, such as:
- Identity Governance. Identity governance covers a broad range of practices meant to secure the digital identities of users within a system or network. Well-executed identity governance strategies help organizations reduce operational costs from IAM by streamlining access to critical resources while simultaneously minimizing illicit access risks.
- Web Access Management. Web access management (WAM) specifically deals with the accessibility of online resources. WAM is especially critical for organizations with remote users or that are reliant on cloud-based resources.
- Access Reviews. This is a service where an IAM service provider or a person within the organization takes a look at user privileges through the filter of a policy of least privilege (POLP). The intent is to restrict access to only what each individual user needs to fulfill their job function or to satisfy a regulatory compliance standard.
- Certification Campaign Management. A certification campaign (or Access Review) managed service is a compliance-as-a-service (CaaS) solution offered by IAM service providers. It can combine campaign configuration, date normalization, launch, monitoring, data review services, communication with the reviewers, delivery of compliance review results to auditors, and delivery of dashboards summarizing campaign results to executives. This managed service provides both technical execution and hands-on support, enabling organizations to complete access reviews efficiently with minimal effort from internal teams.
Need help auditing your IAM strategy or implementing a new solution? Reach out to GCA to get started!
We’re a boutique IAM professional and managed services partner that can help you meet or exceed your regulatory compliance requirements, enabling you to spend more time meeting your core business objectives and less time trying to manage IAM solutions.
