SCIM user provisioning

[dustinsuits]

At small scale, JIT (Just‑In‑Time) provisioning can be “good enough”: a user signs in via SSO, and the app creates their account on first login. But as an organization grows, JIT breaks down in ways that SCIM solves cleanly.

1. Lifecycle accuracy vs. “phantom” access

• JIT only knows about users who actually log in. If someone changes roles or leaves the company but never logs in again, their access in the app is never updated or removed.
• SCIM receives push updates directly from the identity provider (e.g., Entra/Okta) whenever a user is created, updated, or deactivated, so app access always reflects the source of truth.
• Result: with SCIM, offboarding and role changes are reliably enforced, not best-effort.

2. Pre-provisioning and group-based access

• JIT can’t safely pre‑provision access; you only get users after they log in, and fine‑grained access (roles, groups, projects) tends to be managed manually in the app.
• SCIM lets us pre‑provision users and groups, and keep group/role membership in sync with our directory.
• Result: we can onboard teams in bulk, align access with security groups, and avoid manual role assignment in your UI.

3. Deprovisioning and compliance

• With JIT, deprovisioning is essentially manual clean‑up in the vendor UI, which is error‑prone and doesn’t scale.
• With SCIM, when a user is disabled or removed in the IdP, they are automatically disabled or removed in your app.
• Result: this reduces security risk, improves auditability, and aligns with compliance requirements around timely access removal.

4. Operational overhead for your customers (and your support team)

• JIT pushes ongoing user management work into the customer’s admin team: CSV imports, manual adjustments, and support tickets when something is out of sync.
• SCIM turns this into a zero‑touch integration after initial setup; admins manage users and groups once in the IdP and everything updates automatically.
• Result: fewer customer tickets about access issues, cleaner directories, and a stickier enterprise‑grade integration.

5. Enterprise expectations

• For modern enterprise customers, SSO + SCIM is the standard ask: SSO for authentication, SCIM for authorization and lifecycle.
• JIT alone is often treated as a temporary workaround; lack of SCIM can be a blocker for rolling out to more teams or higher‑risk use cases.

TL;DR: JIT is a convenient on‑ramp, but SCIM is what makes identity management reliable, auditable, and low‑touch at enterprise scale. Supporting SCIM will reduce admin friction, improve security posture, and make your product easier to adopt across large organizations.