Topic starter
14/05/2026 5:38 pm
TL;DR: Enterprise identity teams now average 11 workforce identity security tools, 44% run multiple PAM products, and stolen credentials drive 31% of breaches, leaving privileged access fragmented across disconnected systems, according to Saviynt. Disconnected governance, not credential scarcity, is now the operational failure that matters.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Saviynt: “The Cost of Tool Sprawl for Privileged Access”.
By the numbers:
- Enterprise identity teams use an average of 11 workforce identity security tools, according to Saviynt.
- 44% of organizations run multiple PAM tools, according to Saviynt.
- Stolen credentials account for 31% of all breaches, according to Saviynt.
Key questions
Q: What breaks when privileged access governance is split across IGA and PAM?
A: The control breaks at the handoff.
Q: Why do disconnected identity systems increase breach risk?
A: Disconnected systems hide overprivileged accounts, orphaned identities, disabled authentication controls, and exposed credentials.
Q: How do organisations know whether their access model is really Zero Standing Privilege?
A: Look for whether access exists only for a specific task, expires automatically, and is scoped narrowly enough that users and automation cannot carry broad privilege between actions.
Practitioner guidance
- Map privileged access handoffs across tools Document where IGA, PAM, password management, and access management exchange state, and identify every manual step, connector, and delayed sync in the path.
- Trace standing privilege to lifecycle events Check whether role changes, contractor offboarding, and service account changes automatically alter privileged entitlements or leave dormant access behind.
- Inventory privileged NHI credentials separately Build a distinct inventory for service accounts, API keys, and other NHI credentials that hold privilege but do not appear in human access review cycles.
Bottom line: Tool sprawl turns privileged access into a governance problem because critical context is split across systems that do not reliably synchronise.
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This topic was modified 6 days ago by NHI Mgmt Group
This topic was modified 4 days ago by NHI Mgmt Group
14/05/2026 5:41 pm
Identity tool sprawl has become an access-control failure, not a tooling inconvenience. When privileged access governance is split across multiple consoles, no system owns the full lifecycle of a privilege decision. That means the programme loses the ability to answer a basic governance question: who can still act, under what authority, and on which credential state. The implication is that privileged access must be governed as one control domain, not as separate product categories.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 97% of NHIs carry excessive privileges, increasing unauthorised access and broadening the attack surface, according to the Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
A question worth separating out:
Q: What should teams do when privileged access changes do not propagate across systems?
A: Treat that as a governance failure, not a support issue. The immediate task is to trace every source of privilege state, identify which system is authoritative for each identity type, and remove any path where revocation depends on manual follow-through.
👉 Read our full editorial: Identity tool sprawl is breaking privileged access governance
This post was modified 6 days ago by NHI Mgmt Group
This post was modified 4 days ago by NHI Mgmt Group