User provisioning can be time-consuming, but it’s essential nonetheless. New employees, third-party vendors, freelancers, and more need their own accounts and access privileges to IT systems and applications, and automated user provisioning can make the process painless.
So, let’s examine the main benefits of automated user provisioning, how it improves efficiency, and how Splashtop and Foxpass make automated provisioning efficient and secure.
What Is Automated User Provisioning?
Automated user provisioning is the process of automatically creating and configuring user accounts and privileges. It includes application and system access permissions, so new users can access the tools and information they need without being granted full access to areas they’re not allowed to access.
Automated IT provisioning manages account creation, management, and removal across systems and applications. Automated provisioning can also manage user access across connected identity systems, such as Wi-Fi networks (via RADIUS) and servers (via LDAP/SSH), without requiring manual updates. This allows organizations to onboard new users quickly while reducing the need for manual intervention.
Why Automated User Provisioning is Essential for Modern Businesses
When an organization adds a new employee, vendor, or freelancer, they want to onboard them quickly while setting strict access permissions. Automated user provisioning provides this necessary centralized user management while saving time spent manually adding users and managing their access.
As a result, automated user provisioning can reduce multiple difficulties that businesses face when adding users, including:
Scalability: As businesses grow and add new employees, they should be able to set up and provision accounts quickly. Automated user provisioning helps companies quickly scale and onboard users with minimal difficulty.
Security: User provisioning is essential for managing access permissions. With automated provisioning, organizations can instantly grant users the permissions they need (and no more than that) while minimizing human error.
Operational costs: Automated provisioning is a cost-effective approach to user provisioning, as it gets new users set up and onboarded with minimal manual effort, freeing IT agents to focus on more pressing issues.
Inefficiencies: Manual provisioning can be time-consuming and inefficient. Automated provisioning is a fast and efficient process that gets users onboarded more quickly and requires less time and resources.
How Automating User Provisioning Enhances Efficiency and Security
Automating user provisioning can seem like a small change. Still, it has a big impact on businesses, especially when they need to onboard and provision multiple employees, grant temporary access to freelancers, or give third-party vendors limited permissions.
First, automated user provisioning can improve cybersecurity. IT administrators can set predefined rules for access permissions, ensuring users can access the tools and systems they need and reducing the risk of human error. This can be used for role-based access controls, making it easy to manage and control who has access to what.
Additionally, automation improves efficiency by eliminating the redundant, repetitive, and time-consuming work required to manually add and provision each new user. Automating the onboarding and offboarding processes makes them significantly faster while automatically enforcing consistent access control policies.
Understanding the Workflow of Automated Provisioning and Deprovisioning
With all that said, it’s important to understand how automated provisioning and deprovisioning work and how they compare to manual processes.
With manual provisioning, whenever a new user is onboarded, administrators must create a new account in the system for that user for every application and service they use, assign access permissions based on roles and groups, and configure their access settings. When that employee leaves, the admin must delete their accounts from each service again.
Automated provisioning, on the other hand, uses an Identity and Access Management (IAM) system integrated with their HR system or employee directory. When a new employee is added, the IAM system automatically assigns accounts and access rights based on predefined rules and the employee’s role, creates user accounts, configures access settings, and notifies relevant stakeholders about the change. If the employee leaves, the account and permissions are automatically removed.
In short, automated provisioning handles all the tasks required for user onboarding and offboarding quickly and accurately, so IT agents and admins don’t need to worry about them and can focus on other tasks.
Automate Account Provisioning with Just-In-Time User Provisioning
One of the most time-efficient ways to provide permissions and onboard users is with Just-In-Time (JIT) user provisioning. This automates user account creations for web applications, using the SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) protocol and single sign-on (SSO) connections to automatically create accounts for new users.
JIT provisioning allows dynamic account creation when required, so users can access the apps, tools, and services they need without creating individual accounts for each one, much less for services they don’t need. To use Just-In-Time provisioning, admins create an SSO connection between their identity provider and the services employees use. Then, when a new user tries to log in to the application or service, the SSO connection provides all the information they need to create a new account instantly.
JIT user provisioning is a streamlined approach to user provisioning and account creation, letting users create accounts for the tools and services they need without requiring IT admins to step in every time. At the same time, it helps ensure that accounts are only created as needed, thus reducing the attack surface for potential breaches.
How Foxpass and Splashtop Secure Workspace Streamline Automated User Provisioning
Implementing automated user provisioning becomes far more effective when your access controls update instantly based on identity provider changes. That’s exactly what Foxpass and Splashtop Secure Workspace deliver.
Foxpass Cloud RADIUS and Foxpass LDAP integrate directly with identity providers like Microsoft Entra ID, Okta, and Google Workspace to automate provisioning and deprovisioning for Wi-Fi and server access. When a user is added or removed in the directory, Foxpass immediately updates their network and server authentication. This eliminates manual updates, reduces human error, and ensures users receive only the access they need.
On the application side, Splashtop Secure Workspace extends automated provisioning into a Zero Trust model. Access to private apps, internal resources, and sensitive environments is granted or revoked dynamically based on identity attributes, role, device posture, and security policies. As user information changes in the identity provider, SSW automatically adjusts entitlements to maintain least-privilege access across the organization.
Together, Foxpass and Splashtop Secure Workspace provide an integrated foundation for automated access provisioning across networks, servers, and applications. This unified, identity-driven approach helps IT teams maintain strong security controls, reduce manual workloads, and improve compliance readiness. Start your free trial today and see how Splashtop can streamline access management for your organization.
