Access management is the process which grants authorized users the rights to utilize the services and at the same time prevents unauthorized access. This process is also known as identity and access management (IAM). Access management therefore deals with the following topics:

• Access, in other words access and entry to services, data and facilities.
• Identity, i.e. the identity of the user or technical device which requires the access. The identity must be clearly assignable to the actual person and device. Certificates are often used to ensure this is the case.
• Rights, these are the rights or privileges which the user can exercise. Typical rights are read, write, execute, change or delete.
• Services or service groups, these are roles that the users perform for their activities. The rights are normally assigned to these roles. The user can take on a number of roles and automatically inherits their rights on assignment to this group. This simplifies the administration and overview of the distributed rights and increases their transparency.
• Directory service, describes a specific tool which can be used for the administration of identities, rights and roles.

Access management is in effect the execution of availability and information security management in such a way that the process enables the organization to guarantee the confidentiality, availability and integrity of the services and corporate data. As such, for example, access management ensures that a user is granted the rights in order to utilize the service. However, it is the task of availability management to ensure that this access is also always available within the agreed period. Access management is normally initiated with a service request by the service desk.