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11/06/2026 11:15 pm
TL;DR: Rolling your own authorization is getting harder to justify as systems grow more complex, regulated, and latency-sensitive, according to Cerbos. For most teams, the real question is whether custom access logic is a competitive advantage or an expensive source of risk, technical debt, and slow delivery.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Cerbos: a guide to build vs buy for authorization
By the numbers:
- 70% of organisations grant AI systems more access than they would give a human employee performing the exact same job.
Questions worth separating out
Q: When should teams build authorization logic instead of buying it?
A: Build only when authorization is tightly tied to product differentiation, the rules are simple enough to stay stable, and the team can maintain the code long term.
Q: Why does custom authorization become risky as systems scale?
A: Custom authorization becomes risky because access rules tend to multiply faster than development teams can safely refactor them.
Q: How do security teams judge whether an authorization platform is flexible enough?
A: Look for a policy model that can handle new roles, new attributes, new services, and new compliance constraints without a rebuild.
Practitioner guidance
- Map authorization ownership to governance Assign clear ownership for access policy, enforcement, and audit evidence before deciding whether to build or buy.
- Test for policy churn tolerance Evaluate how often roles, attributes, and compliance rules change in your environment, then check whether the chosen approach can absorb that churn without repeated code changes or redeployments.
- Run a maintenance cost model Compare developer time, testing effort, release delays, and future scaling overhead against the visible purchase price so hidden build costs do not stay off the ledger.
What's in the full article
Cerbos's full guide covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- A practical build-or-buy rubric with the full eight yes/no decision questions for evaluating authorization requirements.
- Detailed examples of when hardcoded roles may be sufficient and when they become a liability as systems grow.
- Implementation and maintenance considerations for teams that need audit visibility, scalability, and compliance support.
- The source’s own examples from startups and regulated organisations that show where the trade-offs become real.
👉 Read Cerbos's guide to build vs buy authorization decisions →
Authorization build vs buy: what should IAM teams weigh now?
Explore further
12/06/2026 7:51 am
Authorization design is now an identity governance decision, not a code preference. When access rules determine who can read, change, or delegate access, the control surface belongs in governance as much as in engineering. The article’s core point is that hidden authorization logic creates audit and change-management risk that IAM teams cannot ignore. Practitioners should treat authorization architecture as part of access governance, not a side effect of application design.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 88.5% of organisations acknowledge that their non-human IAM practices lag behind or are merely on par with their human identity and access management efforts, according to The 2024 Non-Human Identity Security Report.
- 59.8% of organisations see value in a solution that simplifies non-human access management and introduces dynamic ephemeral credentials, according to Aembit research.
A question worth separating out:
Q: What is the biggest hidden cost of rolling your own authorization?
A: The biggest hidden cost is developer time, especially when access changes require code edits, testing, and redeployment. That cost is often larger and less predictable than purchase price, and it can slow product delivery while increasing the chance of mistakes in critical access logic.
👉 Read our full editorial: Build vs buy for authorization: why in-house auth is harder
