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12/06/2026 12:48 am
TL;DR: Centralized IAM is meant to simplify access control, auditing, and lifecycle management, but Zluri’s guide shows that hybrid environments, Shadow IT, and weak identity visibility still make it hard to know who has access and why. The operational gap is not policy intent but governance reach across users, devices, and applications.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Zluri: Access Management Centralized Identity and Access Management: A 101 Guide
By the numbers:
- 84% of organizations experienced at least one identity-related breach in the past year.
- Only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts.
- 97% of NHIs carry excessive privileges, increasing unauthorised access and broadening the attack surface.
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should security teams implement centralized IAM across human and machine identities?
A: Start by inventorying all identity types, then enforce one governance model for provisioning, access review, logging, and revocation.
Q: Why does centralized IAM still fail in hybrid environments?
A: It fails when access is distributed across systems that do not consistently feed the central directory, such as shadow apps, local accounts, and unmanaged machine credentials.
Q: What do security teams get wrong about centralized access control?
A: They often assume that central policy equals complete enforcement.
Practitioner guidance
- Inventory every identity plane Build a complete map of human accounts, service accounts, API keys, tokens, certificates, and shadow applications before declaring the environment centrally governed.
- Extend lifecycle workflows to non-human identities Tie provisioning, change, and revocation steps to service accounts and application credentials so machine access is removed when ownership changes.
- Reduce shadow IT through discovery and control Run continuous discovery across SaaS, on-prem, and BYOD environments, then force unsanctioned access paths into review or retirement.
What's in the full article
Zluri's full guide covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- Step-by-step guidance for structuring a centralized access directory across users, devices, and applications
- Implementation detail for provisioning, de-provisioning, and lifecycle management workflows in a centralized IAM model
- Practical notes on access reviews, reporting, and automated workflows for day-to-day administration
- Examples of how the vendor positions self-service access requests and approval flows in an IAM programme
👉 Read Zluri's guide to centralized identity and access management →
Centralized IAM and shadow IT: where access control breaks down?
Explore further
12/06/2026 10:16 am
Centralized IAM is only as strong as the identities it can actually see. A single control plane does not equal complete governance when shadow IT, local accounts, and non-human identities sit outside the directory. The discipline breaks when visibility is partial, because policy cannot protect what the programme cannot enumerate. Practitioners should treat discovery as the starting condition for IAM authority, not an optional overlay.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 91.6% of secrets remain valid five days after the targeted organisation is notified, showing a critical gap in remediation procedures, according to Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
- Only 20% have formal processes for offboarding and revoking API keys, and even fewer have procedures for rotating them.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Who is accountable when shadow IT creates access risk?
A: Accountability sits with the teams that approved the business process, the owners of the unsanctioned tool, and the identity governance function that failed to detect the gap. If access was never inventoried, no one can prove it was properly governed. That makes ownership and evidence retention essential.
👉 Read our full editorial: Centralized IAM fails when identity sprawl outpaces governance
