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22/06/2026 9:52 am
TL;DR: Recurring access reviews are what keeps least privilege from decaying into privilege creep, because access typically expands across roles, systems, and temporary exceptions over time, according to SecurEnds. The governance problem is not initial provisioning but continuous validation, remediation, and evidence that permissions still match current business need.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by SecurEnds: access reviews and least privilege governance
By the numbers:
- Only 44% of organisations have implemented any policies to manage their AI agents, despite 92% agreeing that governing AI agents is critical to enterprise security.
- Systems with least-privileged AI access had a 17% incident rate vs 76% for over-privileged systems.
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should security teams implement access reviews to enforce least privilege?
A: Security teams should build access reviews around current business need, complete entitlement inventory, and enforced remediation.
Q: Why do access reviews matter more than one-time access cleanup?
A: One-time cleanup reduces noise temporarily, but it does not stop privilege from accumulating again as people change roles, projects, or systems.
Q: What breaks when organisations skip recurring access certification?
A: When recurring certification is missing, stale access stays active, temporary permissions become permanent, and dormant accounts keep their original entitlements.
Practitioner guidance
- Prioritise high-risk access first Start certification cycles with privileged accounts, sensitive applications, and systems that can move money, expose data, or change infrastructure.
- Link recertification to lifecycle events Trigger access reviews after promotions, transfers, terminations, vendor changes, and system migrations instead of relying only on quarterly or annual cycles.
- Track revocation to completion Do not close a certification campaign when someone clicks approve or revoke.
What's in the full article
SecurEnds's full article covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- Step-by-step access review workflow design for managers, application owners, and security teams
- Examples of recurring certification cadences for quarterly, semiannual, and event-driven reviews
- Practical handling of privileged accounts, dormant accounts, and shared service accounts in governance campaigns
- Compliance mapping for SOX, HIPAA, GDPR, ISO 27001, and SOC 2 review evidence
👉 Read SecurEnds's analysis of access reviews and least privilege governance →
Access reviews and least privilege: where does governance still fail?
Explore further
22/06/2026 10:30 am
Least privilege fails first as a governance discipline, not as a policy statement. The article’s core point is that organisations often define access correctly at onboarding and then allow reality to drift. That drift is visible in humans, contractors, service accounts, and administrators alike. The practitioner lesson is that least privilege only exists when entitlement state is continuously revalidated against current work.
A few things that frame the scale:
- Only 44% of organisations have implemented any policies to manage their AI agents, despite 92% agreeing that governing AI agents is critical to enterprise security, according to The 2026 Infrastructure Identity Survey.
- A separate finding from the same survey shows that systems with least-privileged AI access had a 17% incident rate versus 76% for over-privileged systems.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Who is accountable when unnecessary access remains in place?
A: Accountability usually sits with multiple parties: managers or application owners for access decisions, IAM or IGA teams for workflow design, and control owners for proving that revocation occurred. In regulated environments, the organisation remains accountable for showing that least privilege is continuously enforced, not merely documented.
👉 Read our full editorial: Access reviews and least privilege are only effective when recurring
