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Topic starter
11/06/2026 11:52 pm
TL;DR: User lifecycle management remains a weak point because organisations still rely on manual onboarding, mid-lifecycle access changes, and offboarding steps that are slow, error-prone, and easy to miss, according to Zluri. Automated lifecycle workflows reduce operational drag, but the real security value is tighter entitlement control across the full employee journey.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Zluri: "Lifecycle Management Here's How to Solve User Lifecycle Management Problem in Your Organization."
By the numbers:
- 97% of NHIs carry excessive privileges, increasing unauthorised access and broadening the attack surface.
- Only 20% have formal processes for offboarding and revoking API keys, and even fewer have procedures for rotating them.
- 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 user lifecycle management is handled manually?
A: Manual lifecycle management breaks when onboarding, role changes, and offboarding are processed as separate tickets instead of one governed flow.
Q: Why do lifecycle workflows matter for IAM governance?
A: Lifecycle workflows matter because they tie access to identity state changes rather than to isolated requests.
Q: How can security teams tell whether offboarding is working?
A: Offboarding is working when revocation is complete across applications, SSO, licences, and ownership records, not just when a ticket is closed.
Practitioner guidance
- Standardise joiner, mover, leaver states Define a single lifecycle state model across HR, IAM, and app owners so every identity event maps to a consistent provisioning or revocation action.
- Automate baseline provisioning by role Use role and department attributes to assign default SaaS access automatically, then route exceptions through approved requests rather than manual fulfilment.
- Build offboarding checks across all linked systems Require revocation of SSO, application access, licences, and data ownership transfer before a leaver is marked complete.
What's in the full article
Zluri's full article covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- Step-by-step onboarding workflow setup in the Workflows module for new employees and playbooks.
- Role-based app recommendations and self-serve access request handling for mid-lifecycle changes.
- Offboarding workflow sequencing for revoking access, transferring ownership, and saving reusable playbooks.
- Practical product navigation for teams that want the implementation mechanics rather than the governance analysis.
👉 Read Zluri's guide to solving user lifecycle management with automated workflows →
User lifecycle management: where onboarding and offboarding still fail?
Explore further
12/06/2026 8:44 am
Lifecycle governance is still treated as an HR process, but the security failure is an identity failure. Onboarding, role changes, and offboarding are the moments when entitlements should be reconciled, yet many organisations still run them as disconnected workflows. That produces stale access, missed removals, and inconsistent ownership across SaaS, SSO, and cloud-linked systems. The practitioner conclusion is that lifecycle management must be governed as an access control discipline, not an administrative queue.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 91.6% of secrets remain valid five days after the targeted organisation is notified, showing a critical gap in remediation procedures, according to Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
- The same research shows that 97% of NHIs carry excessive privileges, increasing unauthorised access and broadening the attack surface.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How should organisations govern lifecycle management for non-human identities?
A: Organisations should apply the same lifecycle discipline to service accounts, API keys, and agent credentials, but the controls must match the actor type. For non-human identities, the key questions are who owns the credential, when it should be rotated or removed, and which systems inherit trust from it. That prevents machine access from outliving its business purpose.
👉 Read our full editorial: User lifecycle management still breaks at onboarding and offboarding
