Topic starter
25/06/2026 2:41 pm
TL;DR: Manual quarterly access reviews leave ERP, cloud, and ITSM environments exposed to audit findings, insider fraud, and segregation-of-duties failures, according to SafePaaS. Continuous, evidence-based identity governance is now the practical baseline because reactive certification cycles cannot keep pace with modern entitlement sprawl.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by SafePaaS: “The Next Frontier of Governance: Why User Access Review Software Has Become an Enterprise Imperative”.
By the numbers:
- Nearly 75% of access-related audit findings stem from poor visibility and manual review processes.
Key questions
Q: What breaks when access reviews are treated as a quarterly checkbox?
A: Quarterly reviews assume access remains stable long enough to be meaningfully assessed later.
Q: Why do poor access reviews lead to SoD violations and fraud risk?
A: Poor reviews miss toxic combinations that only become visible when entitlements are analysed together across systems.
Q: How can IAM teams tell whether access governance is actually working?
A: Look for complete discovery coverage, low revocation latency, and certification results that match actual entitlement inventories.
Practitioner guidance
- Replace quarterly certification with continuous review Move high-risk applications, privileged roles, and sensitive SoD combinations into an always-on review workflow that re-evaluates access when entitlements change, not only at audit intervals.
- Build a single entitlement source of truth Aggregate access data from ERP, cloud, ITSM, and privileged access systems so reviewers are certifying current entitlements instead of spreadsheet snapshots.
- Prioritise toxic access detection Flag combinations that create segregation-of-duties conflicts, especially where one user can approve, create, and release sensitive transactions across systems.
Bottom line: Manual access reviews create a delay between entitlement drift and governance action, which is exactly when audit findings, fraud risk, and SoD failures accumulate.
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25/06/2026 3:47 pm
Continuous access review is no longer a compliance adjunct. It is the control layer that decides whether identity governance is preventive or merely documentary. When access state changes continuously but review happens quarterly, the governance model is already behind reality. The implication is that identity programmes must measure control freshness, not just certification completion.
A few things that frame the scale:
- Over 70% of organisations lack automated access risk analysis, user access reviews and provisioning and deprovisioning, according to Pathlock's 2025 Digital Transformation and Access Risk Report.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Should privileged access reviews be handled separately from standard user access reviews?
A: They should be governed differently because privileged accounts carry higher blast radius and tighter accountability requirements. Standard access review can focus on broad entitlement validity, while privileged review must also verify business justification, dormant account status, and deprovisioning evidence. Combining them without extra scrutiny hides the riskiest access.
👉 Read our full editorial: Continuous user access review is becoming identity governance