Redundant SaaS apps: where identity governance breaks down

TL;DR: Redundant SaaS apps create licensing waste, shadow IT, and fragmented control surfaces by letting teams adopt overlapping tools outside central visibility, according to Zluri. The bigger issue is that software sprawl also becomes identity sprawl, where access, renewals, and offboarding drift faster than governance can keep up.

NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Zluri: SaaS Management Redundant SaaS Apps, a guide for 2026

By the numbers:

• Only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts.
• 79% of organisations have experienced secrets leaks, with 77% of these incidents resulting in tangible damage.
• 70% of organisations grant AI systems more access than they would give a human employee performing the exact same job.

Questions worth separating out

Q: How should security teams reduce risk from redundant SaaS applications?

A: Security teams should first inventory all overlapping apps, then map each one to its business owner, users, admin accounts, and integrations.

Q: Why do redundant SaaS apps create governance risk?

A: Redundant SaaS apps create governance risk because every extra platform adds another user directory, admin console, and lifecycle process.

Q: What breaks when SaaS app rationalisation is not tied to identity reviews?

A: What breaks is the ability to remove access cleanly.

Practitioner guidance

• Build an application-to-identity inventory List each SaaS app, its business owner, human users, admin accounts, API integrations, and renewal date in one system of record.
• Tie app rationalisation to access review Do not retire duplicate tools from a finance-only perspective.
• Unify renewal and offboarding workflows Route renewals through the same control path as offboarding so unused apps cannot auto-renew without ownership confirmation.

What's in the full article

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

• A practical step-by-step method for discovering redundant SaaS applications across departments and teams
• Specific examples of collaboration, conferencing, project management, and CRM overlap that create duplicate control paths
• A feature-level explanation of Zluri's discovery, usage, alerting, renewal, and integration capabilities
• The vendor's walkthrough of how its platform filters low-usage apps and supports termination decisions

👉 Read Zluri's guide to reducing redundant SaaS apps in 2026 →

Redundant SaaS apps: where identity governance breaks down?

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