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12/06/2026 12:05 am
TL;DR: Access management policies only work when identification, authentication, authorization, and review processes are enforced consistently across users, systems, and privileged accounts, according to Zluri’s analysis. The harder problem is not writing policy but keeping access aligned to role changes, offboarding, and audit evidence before exceptions become exposure.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Zluri: Access Management Policy: Ensuring Compliant Access Control
By the numbers:
- 91.6% of secrets remain valid five days after the targeted organisation is notified, showing a critical gap in remediation procedures.
- Only 20% have formal processes for offboarding and revoking API keys, and even fewer have procedures for rotating them.
- 97% of NHIs carry excessive privileges, increasing unauthorised access and broadening the attack surface.
Questions worth separating out
Q: What breaks when access management policy is written but not enforced?
A: When policy is not enforced, access decisions drift away from business need.
Q: Why do standing privileges create a higher access management risk?
A: Standing privileges increase risk because they remain available outside the task that justified them.
Q: How do security teams know if access reviews are actually working?
A: Access reviews are working when they produce measurable removals, not just completed checkboxes.
Practitioner guidance
- Separate policy intent from control execution Map each policy statement to a specific enforcement point such as provisioning, authentication, authorization, review, or deactivation.
- Rebuild role-change and offboarding flows Require automatic removal or disablement of access when a user changes role, leaves a team, or exits the organisation.
- Split privileged and unprivileged identities Give administrators a daily account and a separate elevated account, then restrict the elevated account to approved tasks only.
What's in the full article
Zluri's full article covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- Step-by-step access policy structure, including purpose, scope, audience, and control components.
- Policy language for identification, authentication, authorization, and compliance evidence.
- Operational examples for role changes, deactivation, and privileged account handling.
- Implementation guidance for JIT access, review routines, and audit logging.
👉 Read Zluri's access management policy guide for compliance and control detail →
Access management policy gaps: what IAM teams are missing?
Explore further
12/06/2026 9:08 am
Access policy is a lifecycle control, not a document control. The article is useful because it treats policy as a mechanism for limiting who can enter and keep access, not as a static compliance artifact. That matters because access drift happens after approval, when role changes, terminations, or exceptions are not translated back into entitlements. Practitioners should treat policy as an operating model with enforcement points, not as written intent.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 91.6% of secrets remain valid five days after the targeted organisation is notified, showing a critical gap in remediation procedures, according to Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
- Only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts, which means most access governance programmes still operate with incomplete machine-identity inventory.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Who should be accountable for access failures in an IAM programme?
A: Accountability should sit with the business owner of the access, the system owner that enforces it, and the identity team that governs it. Shared responsibility is fine, but unclear ownership is not. If no one is accountable for approval, review, and revocation, policy becomes advisory instead of operational.
👉 Read our full editorial: Access management policy gaps expose the real control problem
