User access management vs IGA: where governance now has to lead

TL;DR: User access management still handles provisioning and revocation, but it breaks down when organisations need context, ownership, and continuous review across changing roles and systems, according to SecurEnds. IGA is now the governance layer that keeps access decisions tied to lifecycle events, policy, and audit-ready evidence.

NHIMG editorial — based on content published by SecurEnds: IGA user access management and why identity governance matters in 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.
• Only 44% of organisations have implemented any policies to manage their AI agents, despite 92% agreeing that governing AI agents is critical to enterprise security.

Questions worth separating out

Q: How should security teams govern user access when roles change frequently?

A: Security teams should tie access decisions to lifecycle events such as joiner, mover, and leaver changes, then require the approval rationale to travel with the entitlement.

Q: Why do access reviews fail without identity governance?

A: Access reviews fail when they are reduced to a checkbox exercise and disconnected from ownership, business purpose, and current role.

Q: What is the difference between UAM and IGA in practice?

A: UAM enforces access, while IGA governs why the access exists and whether it should still continue.

Practitioner guidance

• Map every access entitlement to a lifecycle owner. Assign an accountable business or technical owner to each entitlement and require that ownership to be reviewed when a role, team, or application changes.
• Convert annual reviews into event-triggered governance. Use mover, leaver, high-risk, and privilege-change events to trigger immediate review queues for the access that changes fastest.
• Separate enforcement from justification. Keep provisioning and revocation in UAM tools, but store the approval rationale, business purpose, and expiration condition in the governance layer so reviewers can test whether the entitlement still makes sense.

What's in the full article

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

• A side-by-side comparison of UAM and IGA capabilities for teams choosing operating models.
• Examples of how access certifications, SoD checks, and lifecycle automation fit together in practice.
• A list of common UAM-only failure patterns that create audit and governance gaps.
• Implementation-oriented examples of how IGA coordinates access across SaaS, cloud, and on-prem systems.

👉 Read SecurEnds's analysis of user access management vs identity governance →

User access management vs IGA: where governance now has to lead?

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