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11/07/2026 8:23 pm
TL;DR: Fragmented access tools create blind spots, integration friction, and governance gaps, according to Soffid, and specialised IAM vendors with partner ecosystems can better support lifecycle management, compliance, and adaptable deployment across complex environments. The real issue is not tooling volume, but whether identity governance remains coherent enough to control access without losing operational agility.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Soffid: Advantages of working with an IAM solutions vendor
By the numbers:
- Only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts.
- 96% of organisations store secrets outside of secrets managers in vulnerable locations including code, config files, and CI/CD tools.
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should organisations reduce IAM fragmentation across multiple tools?
A: Start by defining a single identity governance model for provisioning, access review, PAM, and revocation.
Q: When does a specialised IAM vendor make more sense than stitching tools together?
A: It makes more sense when the organisation needs consistent lifecycle control, cross-application integration, and support for different local operating realities.
Q: What do security teams get wrong about IAM integration projects?
A: They often treat integration as a technical phase instead of the point where policy either becomes enforceable or fails.
Practitioner guidance
- Consolidate identity governance ownership Assign one operating owner for provisioning, review, privileged access, and revocation so entitlement decisions do not fracture across multiple teams or tools.
- Audit lifecycle change-to-access latency Measure how long it takes for role changes, transfers, and departures to remove or adjust access across core systems, then target the slowest revocation paths first.
- Test integration coverage before expanding scope Inventory legacy applications, regional workflows, and exception processes that still bypass central policy enforcement, then confirm the IAM model can absorb them without manual workarounds.
What's in the full article
Soffid's full article covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- How the vendor frames its integrated module model across access control, password management, privileged access, compliance, and analytics.
- The partner ecosystem argument in more implementation detail, including why local deployment support matters for adaptation.
- The vendor's own positioning on integration, scalability, and long-term support across different organisational environments.
- The article's sector-oriented examples showing how the same IAM approach is adapted to different industries.
👉 Read Soffid's article on specialised IAM vendors and partner ecosystems →
IAM vendor ecosystems: what they mean for governance and integration?
Explore further
11/07/2026 8:53 pm
Fragmented IAM is not just inefficient, it is a governance defect. When access control, PAM, compliance, and analytics sit in separate silos, the organisation loses a reliable view of who has access to what and why. That makes recertification slower, revocation weaker, and exception handling more likely to become the default state. The practitioner lesson is that architecture choices determine governance quality before policy ever does.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 80% of identity breaches involved compromised non-human identities such as service accounts and API keys, 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: How do you know if an IAM programme is actually working?
A: Look for fast, reliable conversion of business change into access change, plus a clean answer to who can access what and why. If revocation is slow, recertification is incomplete, or exceptions are persistent, the programme is operating below its governance intent. Measurement should focus on lifecycle latency and entitlement visibility.
👉 Read our full editorial: IAM vendor ecosystems are replacing fragmented access control
