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17/08/2026 4:37 pm
TL;DR: SEBI compliance for securities firms is no longer a periodic audit exercise, but a continuous identity and privileged-access control problem, according to Arcon’s analysis. The operational question is whether regulated entities can enforce zero trust, least privilege, and auditability across privileged and non-human access before risk becomes a market integrity issue.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Arcon: SEBI compliance, zero trust, and privileged access control
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should security teams implement zero trust for privileged access?
A: Start with the access paths that create the largest blast radius, then require policy checks at each request, not just at login.
Q: Why do privileged accounts create disproportionate risk in securities firms?
A: Privileged accounts can alter configurations, move data, and override controls, so one compromise can affect multiple systems at once.
Q: What do organisations get wrong about machine identities and identity governance?
A: They often treat machine identities as an operational detail rather than a governed population with its own lifecycle and privilege profile.
Practitioner guidance
- Map SEBI-relevant privileged paths Inventory every privileged path into trading, settlement, reporting, and customer-data environments, including human admins and non-human service accounts.
- Enforce task-scoped elevation Replace standing administrative access with just-in-time elevation for time-bounded tasks, and require approval or policy checks for higher-risk actions.
- Extend audit coverage to machine identities Include API keys, tokens, service accounts, and automation credentials in access reviews, logging, and session monitoring.
What's in the full article
Arcon's full article covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- SEBI mandate breakdowns for regulated entities that need clause-by-clause implementation context
- PAM control features and monitoring workflows for privileged session governance in financial environments
- Audit-readiness framing for access logs, policy enforcement, and evidence collection during compliance reviews
- Practical commentary on how regulated entities can align access governance with zero trust expectations
👉 Read Arcon's analysis of SEBI compliance, zero trust, and privileged access control →
SEBI compliance and privileged access: are your controls keeping up?
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17/08/2026 4:43 pm
SEBI-style compliance is really a continuous identity control problem. The article is right to connect regulatory posture with zero trust, privilege management, and monitoring. Those controls matter because securities firms run on identities that move value, not just users who log in. For practitioners, the real shift is to govern access as an always-on control plane rather than a periodic audit artefact.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 1 in 4 organisations are already investing in dedicated NHI security capabilities, with an additional 60% planning to do so within the next twelve months, according to The State of Non-Human Identity Security.
- Only 1.5 out of 10 organisations are highly confident in their ability to secure NHIs, compared with nearly 1 in 4 for securing human identities.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Who is accountable when privileged access controls fail an audit?
A: Accountability usually sits with the control owner, the identity team, and the system owner together, because privileged access crosses policy, platform, and operations. If evidence cannot show who approved access, what changed, and when the privilege ended, the programme has a governance failure, not just a tooling gap.
👉 Read our full editorial: SEBI access governance is becoming a continuous identity control problem
