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06/07/2026 9:37 am
TL;DR: Gartner-linked guidance on reducing the IAM attack surface says visibility, observability, and remediation are the critical levers for finding hidden access paths and reducing exposure across connected and disconnected systems. The real issue is not just seeing more identities, but closing the governance gap between discovery and enforcement.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Zluri: Reduce Your IAM Attack Surface Using Visibility, Observability, and Remediation
By the numbers:
- A staggering 10% of company revenue is spent on SaaS.
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should IAM teams reduce attack surface across SaaS and disconnected systems?
A: Start by inventorying every identity source, including SaaS, directories, local admin paths, and manual exceptions.
Q: Why do visibility tools fail to reduce identity risk on their own?
A: Because visibility only shows the problem.
Q: What do security teams get wrong about identity attack-surface reduction?
A: They often treat a dashboard as the outcome instead of the starting point.
Practitioner guidance
- Build a complete identity inventory Include directories, SaaS apps, disconnected systems, local admin paths, and manual exceptions so the inventory reflects actual access paths rather than just managed systems.
- Link findings to enforced cleanup Route risky entitlements, stale accounts, and unused connectors into deprovisioning, approval revocation, or recertification workflows instead of leaving them in reports.
- Measure reduction by removed exposure Track how many entitlements, accounts, and applications were actually removed or narrowed after review, not just how many were discovered.
What's in the full article
Zluri's full report covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- The source material expands on which data sources make up the IAM attack surface and where visibility gaps tend to originate.
- It also covers how observability and remediation should work together across connected and disconnected systems.
- The report includes the provider's framework for using IVIPs to unify IAM visibility across different environment types.
- Practitioners will also find the report's recommendations for IAM leaders who need to strengthen security posture.
👉 Read Zluri's report on reducing the IAM attack surface with visibility and remediation →
IAM attack surface visibility: what IAM teams need to fix now?
Explore further
06/07/2026 9:51 am
Attack-surface reduction fails when identity visibility stops at the directory boundary. The article points to a real governance problem: teams can only control what they can see, and identity state rarely lives in one place. SaaS growth, shadow IT, and disconnected systems all widen the attack surface faster than manual governance can keep up. Practitioners should treat incomplete identity inventory as a control failure, not a documentation gap.
A few things that frame the scale:
- From our research: The average estimated time to remediate a leaked secret is 27 days, despite 75% of organisations expressing strong confidence in their secrets management capabilities, according to The State of Secrets in AppSec.
- Only 44% of developers are reported to follow security best practices for secrets management, which shows how quickly governance breaks down when remediation depends on manual behaviour.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Who should own remediation when risky identity paths are found?
A: Ownership should sit with the team that can enforce change across identity, access, and lifecycle controls, usually IAM or IGA with PAM involvement for privileged paths. The key is not the org chart but the ability to remove or constrain access before it becomes a persistent risk.
👉 Read our full editorial: Gartner-backed IAM visibility points to deeper attack-surface gaps
