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25/06/2026 12:20 am
TL;DR: Privileged access management audits are increasingly used to pressure-test whether organisations can control privileged accounts, including NHIs such as service accounts and API keys, as credential theft rose 160% in 2025 according to Apono. Standing privileges, weak logging, and poor offboarding turn PAM gaps into environment-wide exposure.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Apono: 9 Must Have Components for a Privileged Access Management Audit
By the numbers:
- Non-human identities outnumber human identities by 80:1 in modern cloud and SaaS environments.
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should security teams audit privileged access across human and non-human identities?
A: They should start with a complete privileged identity inventory that includes administrators, service accounts, API keys, certificates, pipeline credentials, and vendor accounts.
Q: Why do standing privileges make PAM audits harder to defend?
A: Standing privileges keep elevated access available after the task is finished, which expands the window in which misuse can occur.
Q: What do teams get wrong about monitoring privileged access?
A: They often treat the presence of logs as proof of control, when the real requirement is identity-linked, tamper-resistant, and reviewable evidence.
Practitioner guidance
- Expand PAM audit scope to include privileged NHIs Inventory service accounts, API keys, certificates, bots, and pipeline credentials alongside human admins.
- Replace standing privilege with time-bound access Require JIT approval and automatic expiry for elevated access wherever operationally possible.
- Prove logging quality, not just logging presence Validate that privileged session logs capture the identity, approval trail, commands, and target system in a tamper-resistant format.
What's in the full article
Apono's full article covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- A step-by-step breakdown of the nine PAM audit components and how each one maps to real audit evidence.
- Specific guidance on JIT access, JEP controls, and automated revocation for privileged accounts.
- Examples of how Apono positions cloud-native access workflows, break-glass access, and logging in practice.
- The article's table summarising each audit component, why it matters, and what auditors look for.
👉 Read Apono's guide to the 9 must-have PAM audit components →
Privileged NHI sprawl: what PAM audit teams are missing?
Explore further
25/06/2026 9:14 am
Privileged access audits are now NHI governance exercises, not just compliance reviews. The article’s focus on service accounts, API keys, and machine identities shows that privileged access no longer lives only with human administrators. A PAM programme that still centres the audit on users alone will miss the identities most likely to create silent blast radius. Practitioners should treat audit scope as an identity inventory problem first, and a compliance artefact second.
A few things that frame the scale:
- Non-human identities outnumber human identities by 80:1 in modern cloud and SaaS environments, according to The 2024 Non-Human Identity Security Report.
- Only 19.6% of security professionals express strong confidence in their organisation's ability to securely manage non-human workload identities.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Who is accountable when vendor privileged access is not revoked on time?
A: The organisation that granted the access remains accountable, even if the vendor held the credential. PAM governance has to include explicit onboarding, access limits, and offboarding evidence for external identities. If contractor access survives the relationship, the failure sits in lifecycle governance, not in the vendor’s behaviour alone.
👉 Read our full editorial: PAM audits now have to account for privileged NHI sprawl
