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07/06/2026 8:00 pm
TL;DR: Identity governance often stalls because access keeps changing across SaaS, cloud, and non-human identities faster than teams can explain, review, or remove it, according to SecurEnds. The real problem is not missing controls but governance that cannot keep pace with access drift and lifecycle change.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by SecurEnds: identity governance maturity and the five steps to strengthen IGA
By the numbers:
- 97% of NHIs carry excessive privileges, increasing unauthorised access and broadening the attack surface.
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should organisations improve identity governance maturity without overengineering the programme?
A: Start with visibility, ownership, and lifecycle control before adding more rules.
Q: Why do non-human identities make identity governance harder than employee access alone?
A: Because service accounts, integrations, and vendor credentials often outlive the business context that created them.
Q: What breaks when access reviews are only run on a fixed schedule?
A: Fixed-cycle reviews encourage repetition, not judgment.
Practitioner guidance
- Map governance by identity type Separate employee, contractor, service account, and vendor access into distinct governance views so ownership and review cadence reflect how each identity behaves.
- Rebuild access reviews around risk and change Replace identical calendar-driven reviews with scoped reviews triggered by role movement, privilege increase, inactivity, or sensitive entitlement changes.
- Assign explicit owners to non-human access Require a named business and technical owner for every service account, integration, and shared credential so removal is accountable when the system or vendor relationship changes.
What's in the full article
SecurEnds' full article covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- Step-by-step maturity progression from basic access administration to continuous governance
- Practical examples of how SecurEnds applies visibility and entitlement cleanup across identity types
- More detail on user access review workflows and how review scope changes with programme maturity
- The article's own explanation of where its maturity model fits into a broader IGA rollout
👉 Read SecurEnds' guide to identity governance maturity and IGA steps →
Identity governance maturity gap: what IAM teams are missing?
Explore further
07/06/2026 9:46 pm
Identity governance maturity is now an access-risk issue, not a process-label issue. The article shows that programmes stall when access changes faster than review, ownership, and policy enforcement. That means maturity is not about adding more workflow, but about reducing uncertainty in how access is granted, explained, and removed. Practitioners should treat maturity as a control quality problem, not an administrative milestone.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 97% of NHIs carry excessive privileges, increasing unauthorised access and broadening the attack surface, according to Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
- 91.6% of secrets remain valid five days after the targeted organisation is notified, showing why lifecycle delay turns governance gaps into exposure windows.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Who should own lifecycle cleanup for service accounts and vendor access?
A: Both a business owner and a technical owner should be accountable. Business ownership keeps the access tied to an active use case, while technical ownership ensures revocation, rotation, and review do not get lost during system or vendor changes. Without that split, orphaned access becomes normal.
👉 Read our full editorial: Identity governance maturity is now a board-level access risk
