Identity and access management (IAM) solutions focus on the access rights, access activity and storage of sensitive data and help organizations understand who has access to what information, how, when and why they accessed such information. Because sensitive data resides in corporate IT systems, IAM solutions integrated with these systems are essential in achieving regulatory compliance.

This white paper provides an overview of SOX, GLBA, and HIPAA and translates these mandates into identity management requirements and challenges. This paper also defines and describes an IAM reference model and ends with applying the reference model to three mandates and general identity compliance challenges.