Service account governance gaps teams are still missing

TL;DR: Service accounts are rising across SaaS environments, but Zluri’s guide says many teams still lack full visibility, centralized ownership, least-privilege enforcement, and timely access reviews, leaving privileged non-human accounts exposed to misuse and lateral movement. The governance problem is structural: access can outlive accountability unless lifecycle controls are explicit.

NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Zluri: Security & Compliance How To Effectively Govern Service Accounts? Guide For 2026

By the numbers:

• Only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts.
• 97% of NHIs carry excessive privileges, increasing unauthorised access and broadening the attack surface.
• 96% of organisations store secrets outside of secrets managers in vulnerable locations including code, config files, and CI/CD tools.

Questions worth separating out

Q: What breaks when service accounts do not have clear ownership?

A: When service accounts lack clear ownership, no one can reliably approve, review, or retire them.

Q: Why do service accounts with standing privilege increase risk?

A: Standing privilege increases risk because the account remains ready for use even when the original operational need has passed.

Q: How do security teams know if service account access reviews are working?

A: Access reviews are working only if they lead to measurable entitlement changes, not just completed certifications.

Practitioner guidance

• Build a complete service account inventory Map service accounts across apps, directories, developer tools, and integrations, then assign a named owner and business purpose to each one.
• Reduce permanent privilege on automation identities Review every service account for permissions that exceed the workload’s actual function.
• Tie access review to revocation and termination Use certification outcomes to trigger removal, modification, or termination of service accounts that are inactive, unowned, or no longer tied to a current application.

What's in the full article

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

• Step-by-step discovery methods for locating service accounts across IDPs, directories, apps, and finance systems.
• A worked walkthrough of certification creation, reviewer assignment, fallback owners, and post-review playbooks.
• Examples of auto-remediation actions for rejected or modified service account access.
• Audit trail and reporting outputs that support evidence collection for governance reviews.

👉 Read Zluri's guide on governing service accounts for 2026 →

Service account governance gaps teams are still missing?

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