User access management gaps: are your controls keeping up?

TL;DR: User access management breaks down when organisations rely on manual provisioning, weak review cycles, and unrestricted role assignment, leaving access creep, shadow IT, and compliance exposure unresolved, according to Zluri. The deeper problem is that access policies often assume stable entitlements, while real-world identities accumulate privilege and drift across systems faster than reviews can correct them.

NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Zluri: 8 User Access Management Best Practices

By the numbers:

• Only 20% have formal processes for offboarding and revoking API keys, and even fewer have procedures for rotating them.
• 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.

Questions worth separating out

Q: How should security teams implement least privilege without slowing operations?

A: Start by mapping permissions to real job tasks and eliminating broad catch-all roles.

Q: Why do access reviews often fail to reduce risk?

A: Access reviews fail when the data they rely on is incomplete, stale, or disconnected from actual entitlement changes.

Q: What breaks when just-in-time access is treated as a complete governance model?

A: JIT breaks down when teams assume temporary access alone solves privilege risk.

Practitioner guidance

• Rebuild role definitions around actual job tasks Map current entitlements to current duties, then remove permissions that exist only because a role grew over time.
• Make offboarding a hard revocation workflow Tie leaver and mover events to enforced removal of app access, API keys, and elevated roles so access does not survive the reason it was granted.
• Use JIT only where expiry is enforced technically Do not rely on process reminders to end elevated access.

What's in the full article

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

• Role-based access control examples tied to day-to-day IT administration tasks
• Password and authentication guidance for teams that still manage access manually
• A stepwise access review checklist for provisioning, deprovisioning, and audit readiness
• Offboarding and onboarding workflow guidance for employee access changes

👉 Read Zluri's article on 8 user access management best practices →

User access management gaps: are your controls keeping up?

Explore further

View Full Forum →  |  NHI Foundation Course →