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12/06/2026 9:01 pm
TL;DR: Vendor management skills matter because supplier relationships now carry access, data-transfer, and offboarding risk, and the article argues that communication, decision-making, and project discipline are needed to keep vendor lifecycle controls effective, according to Zluri. The deeper issue is that vendor management becomes identity governance whenever vendors can receive, use, and keep access longer than intended.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Zluri: Vendor Management Top 8 Vendor Management Skills & How to Develop Them
Questions worth separating out
Q: What breaks when vendor access is not offboarded cleanly?
A: The identity relationship outlives the business relationship, which leaves active accounts, shared credentials, or SaaS permissions behind after the work is finished.
Q: Why do vendor relationships complicate access governance?
A: Vendor relationships often span procurement, security, finance, and operations, so no single team sees the full access picture.
Q: How do organisations know whether vendor access is actually controlled?
A: They know it is controlled when every vendor identity is inventoried, owned, reviewed, and revocable on demand.
Practitioner guidance
- Inventory every vendor access path Create a complete register of vendor accounts, shared credentials, API keys, file-sharing permissions, and delegated admin rights.
- Tie offboarding to mandatory revocation steps Make access removal a formal exit requirement for every supplier, including system accounts, SaaS entitlements, and data transfer permissions.
- Assign one accountable owner per vendor relationship Name a business owner and a technical owner for each vendor so approval, access scope, and exit actions do not fall between teams.
What's in the full article
Zluri's full article covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- A fuller breakdown of the soft skills framework behind vendor relationship management and how each skill supports operating discipline.
- Practical examples of how procurement teams can structure vendor onboarding and offboarding activities without losing control of access.
- Details on how Zluri positions automation for vendor access, deprovisioning, and profile removal in its platform context.
- The article's own guidance on developing vendor management capability through experience, internal relationships, and learning resources.
👉 Read Zluri's full article on vendor management skills and lifecycle control →
Vendor management and access offboarding: where governance breaks down?
Explore further
12/06/2026 10:50 pm
Vendor management is an identity governance problem once access enters the relationship. The article focuses on communication, negotiation, and project discipline, but the security reality is that supplier management becomes identity management as soon as vendors receive access to systems or data. That shift is where many organisations lose control because procurement owns the relationship while security owns the risk, and neither owns the full lifecycle. The practitioner conclusion is simple: vendor governance must include access ownership, not just commercial ownership.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 97% of NHIs carry excessive privileges, increasing unauthorised access and broadening the attack surface, according to Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
- That same research finds that only 20% have formal processes for offboarding and revoking API keys, and even fewer have procedures for rotating them.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Who is accountable for vendor access when the relationship ends?
A: Accountability should sit with the business owner of the relationship, supported by the technical team that executes revocation. If that accountability is not explicit, offboarding becomes a best-effort task and residual access is likely to remain in place.
👉 Read our full editorial: Vendor management skills expose the real lifecycle control gap
