The team that creates the access path should also own its policy, review, and retirement. If software can create connectivity directly, governance cannot stop at network configuration. It must include classification, logging, lifecycle review, and a clear decision on when that path is no longer needed.
Why This Matters for Security Teams
Programmable connectivity changes the ownership question from “who configured the network path” to “who is accountable for the access path across its full lifecycle.” Once software can create connectivity directly, the risk is not just misrouted traffic. It is unreviewed trust, excessive privilege, and forgotten paths that outlive the business need.
That is why the creating team should also own policy, review, logging, and retirement. This aligns with the broader NHI governance problem described in the Ultimate Guide to NHIs, where NHI sprawl and weak lifecycle discipline routinely undermine control. NHI Mgmt Group reports that only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts, which shows how quickly ownership gaps become operational blind spots.
Standards guidance also points in the same direction. The OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 treats NHI lifecycle and authorization weaknesses as core security issues, not side effects. In practice, many security teams discover access paths only after they have already been reused, widened, or inherited by another workload.
How It Works in Practice
Ownership should follow the team that can answer four questions at runtime: why does this access path exist, what workload is using it, what policy governs it, and when should it be removed. If a platform team exposes programmable connectivity, that team should own the policy object, the approval logic, telemetry, and the retirement trigger. If an application team requests the path, it should not become a permanent network exception without that team’s ongoing accountability.
Operationally, this usually means treating access paths like non-human identities with a lifecycle, not like static firewall rules. The owner should define who can request the path, what business purpose justifies it, how it is logged, and what conditions revoke it. This is where control mapping to NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 Security and Privacy Controls becomes practical, especially for least privilege, auditability, and change control.
- Assign a named service owner for each programmable path, not just a platform administrator.
- Require policy-as-code so approvals and restrictions are versioned with the workload.
- Log path creation, modification, usage, and retirement in a way that supports review.
- Set expiry, review dates, or usage-based retirement so temporary paths do not become permanent.
- Link the path to the workload identity that uses it, not to a broad network segment alone.
This is also consistent with the attack patterns documented in 52 NHI Breaches Analysis, where weak ownership and slow offboarding allowed credentials or access paths to remain valid long after their original purpose ended. These controls tend to break down in highly dynamic CI/CD environments where paths are generated faster than review and retirement processes can keep up.
Common Variations and Edge Cases
Tighter ownership often increases operational overhead, requiring organisations to balance deployment speed against governance discipline. That tradeoff becomes visible in platforms that spin up short-lived connectivity for jobs, ephemeral environments, or integration testing. Best practice is evolving here, but current guidance suggests the creating team still owns the policy, even if a central platform team provides the underlying guardrails.
In shared infrastructure, ownership can be split, but accountability should not be. The platform team may own the control plane, while the application or product team owns the access intent and the retirement decision. For externally exposed paths, especially those tied to third-party integrations, the review burden should be higher because blast radius is larger and offboarding is often neglected. The Ultimate Guide to NHIs — Key Challenges and Risks highlights how exposure and lifecycle drift increase risk when ownership is unclear.
There is no universal standard for this yet, but the direction is clear: ownership should sit with the team that can remove the path when the business need ends. If no team is clearly accountable for review and retirement, the access path is already a governance failure.
Standards & Framework Alignment
This section maps relevant standards and security frameworks to the operational risks and controls described in this guidance.
OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 and CSA MAESTRO address the attack and risk surface, while NIST CSF 2.0, NIST AI RMF and NIST Zero Trust (SP 800-207) set the governance and control requirements practitioners need to meet.
| Framework | Control / Reference | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 | NHI-06 | Programmable paths create non-human access that must be owned and retired. |
| NIST CSF 2.0 | PR.AC-4 | Least-privilege access must be managed as permissions change over time. |
| NIST AI RMF | Programmable connectivity needs governance, accountability, and monitored lifecycle. | |
| CSA MAESTRO | GOV-02 | Agentic and automated workflows require explicit ownership of policy and control. |
| NIST Zero Trust (SP 800-207) | SC-7 | Zero Trust limits trust in network paths and demands continuous verification. |
Review each access path for least privilege and revoke anything no longer required.
