Topic starter
23/06/2026 7:21 pm
TL;DR: Unosecur argues that cloud migration has not closed the identity gap because many organisations now run workloads in AWS or Azure while still managing access through legacy on-prem systems that struggle with real-time visibility, service accounts, and Just-in-Time control. Cloud IAM maturity, not cloud adoption alone, is the governance test.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Unosecur: “Cloud IAM ROI and Risk Management”.
By the numbers:
- 52% of companies have moved most of their IT environments to the cloud, covering infrastructure, applications, data analytics and beyond.
Key questions
Q: What breaks when cloud IAM modernization stops at federation?
A: Federation alone gives the appearance of cloud readiness without fixing entitlement sprawl, review cadence, or privilege persistence.
Q: Why do service accounts and tokens increase risk in hybrid cloud estates?
A: They increase risk because they can carry standing privilege, bypass human lifecycle controls, and persist long after the business need has changed.
Q: How do teams know if machine IAM is actually working?
A: Look for whether every machine identity has an accountable owner, a documented purpose, and short-lived access that can be revoked without breaking unrelated services.
Practitioner guidance
- Inventory hybrid identity paths Map where access is still governed by on-prem directories, local cloud roles, and manual exceptions so you can see the real control boundary.
- Separate non-human identity ownership Assign a named owner, expiry expectation, and review cadence to service accounts, tokens, scripts, and API credentials that currently sit outside human access governance.
- Move privileged access to JIT Replace persistent admin rights in cloud estates with task-scoped elevation, session logging, and explicit approval paths for high-risk operations.
Bottom line: Cloud IAM maturity depends on whether identity controls have caught up with hybrid operating models, not on whether workloads have moved to the cloud.
What's in the full article
Unosecur's full blog covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- Practical examples of how legacy on-prem IAM creates friction in AWS and Azure estates
- The vendor's step-by-step rationale for treating service accounts and tokens as governed identities
- Specific ways Unosecur positions Just-in-Time access, audit trails, and unified visibility in hybrid environments
- The article's own business-value framing for IAM modernisation across security, compliance, and cost
👉 Read Unosecur's analysis of cloud IAM maturity gaps across hybrid estates →
Explore further
View Full Forum → | NHI Foundation Course → | Our Services → | Read the full analysis →
25/06/2026 3:19 am
Cloud IAM maturity is not a cloud adoption milestone. It is the point at which identity controls match the speed, distribution, and mixed subject types of modern estates. When organisations move workloads but leave access governance anchored to on-prem assumptions, they create a structural mismatch that shows up first as friction and then as exposure. The practical implication is that modern IAM has to be evaluated by operating model fit, not by cloud usage alone.
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.
- More than 95% of infrastructure-as-a-service accounts use less than 3% of the entitlements they are granted, according to Gartner.
A question worth separating out:
Q: When should organisations prioritise cloud IAM modernization over more point controls?
A: They should prioritise modernization when access has become fragmented across cloud, on-prem, and automated identities, because more point controls will not close a governance model gap. The priority should be a unified identity operating model that can govern human users and machine identities together. Otherwise, every new control simply layers more complexity onto the same weak foundation.
👉 Read our full editorial: Cloud IAM maturity gaps are widening across hybrid estates