Notifications
Clear all
Topic starter
01/07/2026 2:07 am
TL;DR: Identity incidents often begin with legitimate access, and Zluri argues that the real gap is full-lifecycle control across authentication, authorization, provisioning, reviews, and offboarding, with Microsoft reporting 600 million identity attacks per day and more than 99% password-based. The governance assumption that access stays stable long enough for manual review is breaking under real operating conditions.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Zluri: Security & Compliance Identity Security Solutions in 2026: A Candid Evaluation Guide for Security Leaders
By the numbers:
- Microsoft reports 600 million identity attacks per day, with password-based attacks accounting for more than 99% of them.
Questions worth separating out
Q: What breaks when access reviews are not linked to deprovisioning?
A: Access reviews become an observation exercise instead of a control.
Q: Why do role changes often create more identity risk than new hires?
A: Role changes are where permission accumulation starts.
Q: How do security teams know whether lifecycle governance is actually working?
A: Look for whether joiner, mover, and leaver actions are executed from the same control model and whether revocation happens without manual follow-up.
Practitioner guidance
- Unify joiner-mover-leaver logic across all app accounts Tie provisioning, role-change cleanup, and deprovisioning into one workflow so old access is removed when new access is added.
- Replace manual access checks with event-driven revocation Trigger revocation from HR and identity events rather than spreadsheet-based checklists, especially when contractors move projects or leave.
- Treat access reviews as evidence gathering, not remediation alone Use review campaigns to surface privileged, orphaned, and unused access, then route the result into automated removal or approval workflows.
What's in the full article
Zluri's full article covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- The full evaluation criteria for choosing between specialist identity tools across authentication, governance, lifecycle, and posture management.
- The product-by-product breakdown of access review workflows, SoD enforcement, and lifecycle automation that implementation teams need.
- The budget and consolidation argument behind replacing multiple point tools with a single governance stack.
- The platform-specific details on how the vendor models SaaS discovery, identity intelligence, and automated remediation.
👉 Read Zluri's evaluation of identity security solutions in 2026 →
Identity security solutions in 2026: where the governance gaps remain?
Explore further
01/07/2026 2:28 am
Full-lifecycle identity control, not point-in-time access control, is the real security boundary. This article is strongest when it argues that authentication alone does not solve identity risk. The failure mode is cumulative access drift across joiner, mover, and leaver events, which means governance must follow the identity across its whole lifecycle. For SaaS-heavy estates, that is the discipline that separates clean access from delayed incident response.
A few things that frame the scale:
- Two-thirds of enterprises have endured a successful cyberattack resulting from compromised non-human identities, with a quarter encountering multiple attacks, according to The 2024 ESG Report: Managing Non-Human Identities.
- 46% of organisations in that same report said they had confirmed a breach of non-human identities, while 26% suspected one had occurred.
A question worth separating out:
Q: What is the difference between access reviews and identity posture management?
A: Access reviews are scheduled checks that ask whether access is still correct at a point in time. Identity posture management is continuous monitoring that looks for drift, orphaned access, and policy violations as they happen. Together they work best when posture findings feed directly into removal or recertification workflows.
👉 Read our full editorial: Identity security solutions in 2026 need full-lifecycle control
