Topic starter
17/08/2026 4:37 pm
TL;DR: Banking identity management fails when access, privilege, and third-party exposure are handled as separate controls, according to Soffid, with IBM cited in the article putting the average incident cost at $6.29 million, 26% above other sectors. The practical conclusion is that continuous verification and auditable governance are now baseline requirements for banking IAM.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Soffid: “Identity management in banking: how to protect critical access points in the financial sector”.
By the numbers:
- The average cost of learning the hard way can reach $6.29 million per incident, 26% higher than in other sectors, according to IBM.
Key questions
A: Split governance creates blind spots, inconsistent review coverage, and access that outlives the business need behind it.
Q: Why does unreviewed third-party access increase banking risk?
A: Third-party access increases risk when it remains active longer than the engagement requires, because it extends trust beyond the original approval context.
Q: How do organisations know if privileged access controls are working?
A: They are working when standing privilege declines, privileged sessions are shorter, and elevated access is granted only when needed.
Practitioner guidance
- Implement continuous access recertification Move from periodic review campaigns to continuous certification of employee, vendor, and privileged access so stale permissions are removed before they accumulate risk.
- Centralize third-party access governance Track vendor accounts, approvals, expiration dates, and revocation status in one control process so third-party access cannot outlive the business need that created it.
- Unify privileged access logging Record who used elevated accounts, what systems they touched, and under what approval context so auditors can reconstruct privileged activity without relying on manual evidence collection.
Bottom line: Banking identity governance fails when access decisions are distributed across disconnected identity silos instead of one auditable control model.
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17/08/2026 4:43 pm
Continuous access governance, not periodic review, is the banking baseline. Banking access risk does not sit neatly inside a quarterly certification cycle because permissions drift continuously across staff, vendors, and privileged accounts. When access is only checked in batches, the organisation is always governing yesterday’s state. The practitioner conclusion is that banking IAM has to operate as an always-on control, not an audit-season activity.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 69% of security leaders agree identity management must fundamentally shift to address agentic AI systems, according to the 2026 Infrastructure Identity Survey.
A question worth separating out:
Q: What should banks do when legacy systems cannot follow the same access policy as modern platforms?
A: Treat the inconsistency as an identity governance problem, not a platform exception. Banks should standardize approval, review, and revocation rules across environments so legacy applications do not become permanent privilege islands. If a system cannot be governed consistently, its access path should be isolated and tightly scoped.
👉 Read our full editorial: Identity management in banking needs continuous, auditable access control