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27/06/2026 1:01 pm
TL;DR: The BearingPoint GRC Study 2025 says European GRC is being reshaped by regulatory pressure, supply-chain complexity, and cyber risk, with identity data now central to who has access, which third parties are connected, and where toxic combinations exist, according to Nexis. The governance shift is clear: IAM evidence is no longer a downstream input, it is becoming core risk infrastructure.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Nexis: GRC BearingPoint GRC Study 2025 and the convergence of IAM and GRC
By the numbers:
- 72% of organisations have experienced or suspect they have experienced a breach of non-human identities, 46% confirmed and 26% suspected.
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should organisations connect IAM data to GRC workflows?
A: They should map IAM sources to the specific controls GRC teams need to test, then automate evidence flow for access, entitlement, and relationship data.
Q: Why do third-party identities create governance gaps in GRC programmes?
A: Third-party identities often sit across multiple systems, owners, and offboarding processes, which makes them easy to miss in recertification and risk reviews.
Q: How do you know if identity visibility is actually improving governance?
A: Look for faster control evidence collection, fewer manual exceptions, and better traceability between access changes and risk decisions.
Practitioner guidance
- Map identity evidence to governance controls Align access inventories, entitlement data, and identity relationships to specific GRC controls so auditors can trace evidence back to source systems without manual reconstruction.
- Normalise identity attributes across systems Standardise user, service account, vendor, and workload identity fields so SoD checks and risk rules operate on consistent data across IAM, IGA, and GRC tools.
- Tie third-party offboarding to live entitlements Require contractor and vendor removal to update access repositories, recertification queues, and risk records at the same time, rather than waiting for periodic reviews.
What's in the full article
Nexis's full article covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- The BearingPoint study framing and how Nexis positions NEXIS QSEC within European GRC adoption patterns
- The study's broader market commentary on language coverage, functional breadth, and modular deployment choices
- The vendor's description of how NEXIS QSEC connects IAM and IGA data sources inside its platform
- The specific claims about enterprise-ready GRC functionality aligned to European regulatory requirements
👉 Read Nexis's analysis of the BearingPoint GRC Study 2025 →
Identity data is becoming the GRC control plane for enterprises?
Explore further
27/06/2026 2:11 pm
IAM is no longer a feeder system for GRC, it is becoming part of the control model itself. The article reflects a broader shift in regulated enterprises: access data now informs compliance, third-party risk, and segregation of duties decisions. That means identity evidence is no longer consumed after the fact, it is used to decide whether the control environment is acceptable in the first place. Practitioners should treat IAM outputs as governance inputs, not just operational records.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 72% of organisations have experienced or suspect they have experienced a breach of non-human identities, 46% confirmed and 26% suspected, according to The 2024 ESG Report: Managing Non-Human Identities.
- Two-thirds of enterprises have endured a successful cyberattack resulting from compromised non-human identities, with a quarter encountering multiple attacks.
A question worth separating out:
Q: What should identity teams prioritise before expanding GRC automation?
A: They should first standardise identity attributes and control mappings across IAM, IGA, and third-party systems. Without consistent data definitions, automation simply scales inconsistency and produces risk outputs that are hard to defend in audit or operations.
👉 Read our full editorial: IAM and GRC are converging around identity risk data
