Topic starter
12/06/2026 12:52 am
TL;DR: 41% of enterprises miss access review deadlines, while manual spreadsheet-based processes still create fragmented visibility, slow remediation, and audit friction, according to Zluri’s survey of 215 IT, GRC, and security leaders. The finding shows access reviews remain a governance bottleneck across human IAM, NHI oversight, and lifecycle controls.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Zluri: “41% of Enterprises Miss Access Reviews Deadlines, According to Our Research”.
Key questions
Q: What breaks when access reviews rely on spreadsheets and other manual tracking methods?
A: Spreadsheets and other manual methods break down when access volume, role churn, and system integrations grow.
Q: Why do poorly governed access reviews create compliance and security risk?
A: Poorly governed reviews create risk because reviewers often lack the context needed to judge whether access is still legitimate.
Q: What are the signs that an access review process is failing in practice?
A: A failing access review process usually shows up as long approval cycles, overloaded reviewers, repeated manual preparation, and heavy engineering effort just to launch each campaign.
Practitioner guidance
- Map the full access review workflow end to end Document where reviewers source entitlement data, who approves exceptions, how remediation is executed, and where evidence is stored.
- Tie certification decisions to actual entitlement changes Make sure a negative or positive review outcome can trigger revocation, role adjustment, or escalation without requiring separate manual follow-up in each application.
- Prioritise mover and leaver events for immediate review Use role changes, departures, and post-integration access changes as forcing functions for entitlement validation instead of waiting for the next periodic certification cycle.
Bottom line: Access review delay is a governance failure because it allows stale entitlement decisions to persist beyond the business conditions that justified them.
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This topic was modified 4 days ago by NHI Mgmt Group
12/06/2026 10:23 am
Access review failure is now a lifecycle governance problem, not a reporting problem. The article shows that the issue is not whether organisations understand the concept of review, but whether they can execute it before access drift becomes normalised. When reviews rely on fragmented spreadsheets and cross-team coordination, governance becomes slower than the identity changes it is meant to control. The practitioner conclusion is that review quality is defined by cycle time and closure, not by the existence of a checklist.
A few things that frame the scale:
- Over 70% of organisations lack automated access risk analysis, user access reviews and provisioning and deprovisioning, according to Pathlock's 2025 Digital Transformation and Access Risk Report.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How should IAM teams respond when access review findings still need manual cleanup?
A: They should redesign the workflow so review outcomes directly drive revocation or adjustment rather than leaving cleanup to separate app-by-app tasks. If manual cleanup remains necessary, the team should treat that as a control gap, because the certification process is not yet closed-loop.
👉 Read our full editorial: Access review deadlines are slipping in enterprise identity governance
This post was modified 4 days ago by NHI Mgmt Group