Topic starter
06/07/2026 9:44 am
TL;DR: Manual access reviews often fail because organisations can show activity but not evidence, leaving audit gaps, lingering access, and remediation uncertainty, according to Zluri. Systematic reviews turn access governance into provable security, compliance, and cost control rather than spreadsheet-driven guesswork.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Zluri: “Why (Automated) User Access Reviews Are Important”.
By the numbers:
- 91% of compliance and security leaders said access reviews are critical for compliance.
- 77% of organisations plan to implement or improve their access review processes within the next year.
Key questions
Q: Why do manual access review reports fail in practice?
A: Manual reports fail because reviewers must reconcile apps, identities, permissions, and remediation actions while the environment keeps changing.
Q: Why do access reviews matter so much in regulatory compliance programmes?
A: Access reviews are where policy becomes operational.
Q: How do organisations know whether access reviews are working?
A: Access reviews are working when they lead to timely removals, reduced exception volume, and role definitions that stop accumulating unused rights.
Practitioner guidance
- Standardise review evidence capture Require every access certification to record the reviewer, decision, timestamp, and remediation status in a format that can be exported for audit without reconstruction.
- Bind remediation to certification closure Do not close a review until removed access is confirmed in the target application, especially for former employees, contractors, and dormant privileged accounts.
- Prioritise high-risk access first Start with admin, production, finance, and third-party access where review failure has the highest breach and compliance impact.
Bottom line: Manual access reviews create a false sense of control when teams can show activity but not demonstrate closure, approvers, or remediation.
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06/07/2026 10:01 am
Proof is now the control, not the paperwork: Manual access reviews fail when they are treated as evidence gathering after the fact instead of evidence generation during execution. The control objective is not to show that a team discussed access, but to show who certified what, when, and how remediation was completed. For identity governance, that makes certification a control record, not an administrative ritual.
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: What should teams do when review findings are not remediated?
A: Escalate unresolved exceptions before the review is closed and require confirmation that the access change took effect in the target system. A review that ends with an open ticket is not a completed control, it is only a documented concern.
👉 Read our full editorial: Automated access reviews expose the gap between policy and proof