M&A identity sprawl: what IAM teams need to fix first

TL;DR: Mergers and acquisitions create identity visibility, access management, privilege, and compliance problems that can delay integrations and expose sensitive systems, according to Zluri. The core issue is that identity programmes assume one operating model, while M&A forces two or more to coexist long enough for gaps to become exploitable.

NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Zluri: 5 Identity Challenges in M&A To Address in 2026

By the numbers:

• A logistics company implementing a least privilege access model during their M&A saw a 70% reduction in unauthorized access attempts within the first 3 months.

Questions worth separating out

Q: What breaks when identity governance is not aligned during M&A?

A: The first break is usually visibility, followed by inconsistent provisioning and delayed revocation.

Q: Why do mergers and acquisitions increase access risk for service accounts and privileged users?

A: M&A increases access risk because temporary exceptions become common, and temporary exceptions often survive longer than the integration itself.

Q: What do security teams get wrong about least privilege during integration projects?

A: They often treat least privilege as a post-migration clean-up task rather than a design constraint.

Practitioner guidance

• Build a merged identity inventory first Inventory users, groups, service accounts, application accounts, and privileged entitlements across both organisations before any migration or cutover work.
• Map role equivalence before automating access Compare job-based and department-based role structures, then create a translation layer for RBAC and provisioning rules.
• Treat offboarding as part of the merger plan Revoke stale access, retire unused accounts, and validate that shared credentials and admin paths are reassigned or removed as part of the integration workstream.

What's in the full article

Zluri's full article covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:

• The five identity challenges in M&A, including visibility, migration, access management, privilege, and compliance.
• Practical examples of how Zluri positions discovery, workflow automation, and access review inside merger programmes.
• The specific platform features the vendor describes for unifying access across multiple identity sources.
• The article's own implementation examples for onboarding, RBAC, and compliance alignment.

👉 Read Zluri's analysis of the five identity challenges in M&A →

M&A identity sprawl: what IAM teams need to fix first?

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