Full IGA coverage gaps: what IAM teams are missing

TL;DR: Full IGA platforms automate approvals, certifications, and policy enforcement, but they still depend on complete connectivity, clean data, and consistent adoption, leaving legacy systems, ad hoc exceptions, orphaned accounts, and identity drift outside the governance model according to Gathid. The governance problem is not whether IGA exists, but whether it can prove daily access reality across the full environment.

NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Gathid: Daily Trust, A Smarter Path to Identity Governance Part Four

By the numbers:

• 79% of organisations have experienced secrets leaks, with 77% of these incidents resulting in tangible damage.
• 97% of NHIs carry excessive privileges, increasing unauthorised access and broadening the attack surface.
• Only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts.

Questions worth separating out

Q: How should security teams handle identity governance when full IGA still leaves blind spots?

A: Teams should treat full IGA as one layer in a broader control model, not the final state.

Q: Why do mature IGA programmes still miss real access risk?

A: Mature IGA programmes still miss real access risk because certifications and approvals only validate the model they can see.

Q: What breaks when identity context is missing from access decisions?

A: When identity context is missing, the programme loses business ownership, employment status, and role alignment, which makes recertification and role design less reliable.

Practitioner guidance

• Inventory governance blind spots outside the IGA connector set Identify legacy applications, OT systems, physical access, ad hoc exceptions, and third-party paths that are not represented in the current IGA model.
• Reconcile certified access against live access continuously Compare approved entitlements with actual runtime or operational access on a daily basis where possible.
• Make contextual identity a required input to decisions Tie access records to business unit, employment status, contract status, and accountable owner before recertification or policy decisions are approved.

What's in the full article

Gathid's full article covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:

• How Gathid positions itself alongside Full IGA across pre-deployment, deployment, and post-deployment phases
• The specific visibility, context, and daily assurance functions the vendor says complement workflow-based governance
• The way Gathid describes its digital twin model for identity landscapes, including legacy and disconnected systems
• The vendor's own examples of how it claims to detect drift, privilege escalation, and policy violations over time

👉 Read Gathid's analysis of daily trust gaps in full IGA programmes →

Full IGA coverage gaps: what IAM teams are missing?

Explore further

View Full Forum →  |  NHI Foundation Course →