Patent ID: 8181016

Claim:
A method of re-certifying a user's access rights to applications maintained in an institution's computer system to ensure that the applications are accessed by appropriate users, comprising the steps of: assigning a recertification timeline for the user's access rights and a user's reviewer to perform the recertification; notifying, by a re-certification administrator, the user's reviewer to re-certify the user's access rights to the applications maintained in the institution's computer system, wherein user has access to the applications maintained in the institution's computer system based upon a user's functional role, and wherein further the notification is completed by sending a message, electronically, to the user's reviewer at a time prior to a re-certification due date, requesting the user's reviewer to re-certify the user's access rights, by a predetermined date and the message comprises a list of users whose access rights need to be re-certified and lists a predetermined date for the re-certification of each user's access rights; further notifying, by the re-certification administrator, the user's reviewer to re-certify the user's access rights to the applications maintained in the institution's computer system in response to the user's reviewer choosing not to respond to the notification; deciding, by the user's reviewer, whether to change the user's reviewer in response to the notification; initiating, by the user's reviewer, a re-certification process for the user by electronically selecting a link within the message, wherein the link comprises options comprising adding or removing the applications and changing the recertification timeline; confirming, during the re-certification process, by the user's reviewer, the applications that the user is allowed to continue to access based upon the status of the user's functional role within the institution; adding, during the re-certification process, by the user's reviewer, new applications in response to the user's functional role within the institution changing and the user's new functional role requiring accessing additional applications; removing, during the re-certification process, by the user's reviewer, the applications that the user does not require access to due to the fact that the user's functional role within the institution have changed and his new functional role does not require to access these applications which he used to access in his previous functional role; and updating the user's access rights so that the user is only able to access the applications allowed by the most recent re-certification process.