SCIM
A standard for automatically creating, updating, and deactivating user accounts across connected applications.
Where single sign-on handles authentication, SCIM handles provisioning. When someone is added to a group in your directory, their account appears in the connected application; when they are disabled, it deactivates there too.
It is what makes offboarding reliable at scale, because it removes the manual step in each application that people forget.
Where this comes up
SCIM sits inside our identity and access work. If you are trying to work out what this means for your own environment rather than in the abstract, that is the page worth reading next, and a short call will get you a straight answer faster than either.
Related terms
Single sign-on Signing in once to an identity provider and reaching many applications without authenticating again to each. Offboarding Removing every piece of access a departing person holds, on the day they leave. Joiner, mover, leaver The three lifecycle events that should trigger changes to someone's access, handled as a defined process. Identity and access management The discipline of controlling who has an account, how they prove it, and what they are allowed to reach.