Topic starter
25/06/2026 5:19 pm
TL;DR: NIS2 pushes organisations to treat identity security as a core compliance control, with SailPoint arguing that identity contributes to five of the directive’s ten pillars, including supply chain security, access control and cyber hygiene. The practical conclusion is that access visibility, privileged account control and toxic entitlement remediation now sit inside regulatory risk management, not beside it.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by SailPoint: “Pillars of the NIS2 Directive: Recommended risk management measures”.
By the numbers:
- The article says the supply chain attack type it discusses is 40% more frequent than malware or ransomware attacks.
Key questions
Q: What breaks when NIS2 is treated as a checkbox compliance exercise?
A: The programme breaks at the point where controls are assumed to equal resilience.
Q: Why do supplier identities create so much NIS2 compliance risk?
A: Supplier identities often have legitimate access but weaker governance than internal users, which makes them easy to overlook in lifecycle reviews and offboarding.
Q: How should IAM teams prioritise NIS2 remediation work?
A: Start with the access conditions that most clearly undermine control: privileged accounts, shared accounts, accounts without owners, unused rights and toxic entitlement accumulation.
Practitioner guidance
- Map NIS2 pillars to identity controls Tie the directive’s risk, access, cyber hygiene and supply chain expectations to the specific identity controls that satisfy them in your environment.
- Review privileged and shared accounts first Start with high-risk access that is shared, unmanaged, unused or broadly privileged, because those are the clearest compliance weak points.
- Treat third-party accounts as governed identities Assign ownership, scope and offboarding rules to supplier, contractor and partner access so external identities do not outlive the business need.
Bottom line: NIS2 compliance becomes operational only when organisations can prove control over identities, access and privilege across live systems.
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25/06/2026 5:55 pm
Identity control is the compliance evidence layer behind NIS2. NIS2 is often described as a governance obligation, but this article shows that its practical test is whether identity controls can be demonstrated across the environment. Policies on risk, access, segregation of duties and supply chain security only count when the organisation can prove who had access, why they had it, and when that access was removed. The practitioner conclusion is that identity governance is the evidence mechanism for NIS2, not a separate workstream.
A question worth separating out:
Q: What is the difference between policy compliance and identity control for NIS2?
A: Policy compliance says the organisation has rules. Identity control proves those rules are enforced in live access data, including who has access, what they can reach and whether the access is removed when it is no longer justified.
👉 Read our full editorial: NIS2 compliance depends on identity control, not checkbox governance