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09/06/2026 11:33 pm
TL;DR: Unwanted persistence in Active Directory and Entra ID is often rooted in stale accounts, role transitions, and lingering privilege, according to Netwrix's on-demand webinar with Sander Berkouwer and Darryl Baker. The governance problem is not cleanup after the fact, but building lifecycle controls that remove access before persistence becomes the path of least resistance.
NHIMG editorial — here’s why we think this discussion matters
By the numbers:
- Only 20% have formal processes for offboarding and revoking API keys, and even fewer have procedures for rotating them.
- Only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts.
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should security teams prevent unwanted persistence in Active Directory and Entra ID?
A: Security teams should tie identity removal to lifecycle events, not just login disablement.
Q: Why do stale accounts and old privilege create such a large persistence risk?
A: Because stale objects preserve legitimate-looking access paths even after the original business need is gone.
Practitioner guidance
- Rebuild offboarding as a directory retirement workflow Map leaver handling, admin exits, and application decommissioning to explicit object retirement steps in Active Directory and Entra ID.
- Recalculate privilege after every role transition Treat movers as a privilege reset event.
- Inventory dormant identity objects and orphaned admin paths Identify accounts, application principals, and delegated rights that no longer map to an active business owner.
What to expect at the briefing
Netwrix's full webinar covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- Speaker-led guidance on detecting unwanted persistence patterns in Active Directory and Entra ID.
- Practical discussion of offboarding, stale account handling, and privileged access removal.
- Context-aware remediation examples that roll back unauthorized changes without losing investigation context.
- Operational guidance for using Access Analyzer, Threat Prevention, and Recover in identity workflows.
👉 Watch Netwrix's on-demand webinar on detecting and remediating unwanted persistence →
Active Directory persistence and identity hygiene: what teams need to know?
Explore further
10/06/2026 1:55 am
Identity persistence is a lifecycle failure before it is a detection failure. Unwanted persistence in AD and Entra ID usually survives because the identity estate is not being fully re-evaluated at offboarding and role transition points. That means the attacker is often benefiting from old legitimacy, not sophisticated tradecraft. The implication is that directory governance has to be measured by how completely it removes obsolete access, not by how quickly it flags suspicious activity.
A few things that frame the scale:
- Only 20% have formal processes for offboarding and revoking API keys, and even fewer have procedures for rotating them, according to the Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
- Only 96% of organisations store secrets outside of secrets managers in vulnerable locations including code, config files, and CI/CD tools.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How do teams know whether identity hygiene is actually improving?
A: Look for fewer dormant accounts, fewer orphaned privileges, and shorter time-to-removal for leavers and role changes. A healthy programme can show that identity objects are being retired as fast as business context changes, rather than accumulating hidden access over time.
👉 Read our full editorial: Detecting unwanted persistence in Active Directory and Entra ID
