Vendor sprawl and identity governance: what IAM teams should re-evaluate

TL;DR: Vendor sprawl drives redundant licensing, higher administrative overhead, and visibility gaps across identity and security tooling, according to JumpCloud’s guide. Consolidation can reduce cost, but the real governance question is whether a unified platform restores control without creating new single points of failure.

NHIMG editorial — based on content published by JumpCloud: a guide to vendor consolidation in IT security

By the numbers:

• Only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts.
• 96% of organisations store secrets outside of secrets managers in vulnerable locations including code, config files, and CI/CD tools.
• 97% of NHIs carry excessive privileges, increasing unauthorised access and broadening the attack surface.

Questions worth separating out

Q: How should security teams evaluate vendor consolidation for identity governance?

A: They should measure whether consolidation improves authority, visibility, and lifecycle control across identities, not just whether it reduces license count.

Q: When does a unified security platform create more risk than it reduces?

A: It creates more risk when it centralises control without adequate segmentation, role separation, and monitoring.

Q: What do teams get wrong about reducing the number of security vendors?

A: They often treat vendor count as the metric, when the real issue is whether authority is coherent.

Practitioner guidance

• Inventory identity control ownership across the stack Document which product owns authentication, authorisation, logging, secrets, and device posture so you can see duplicated or conflicting authority before consolidation begins.
• Prioritise consolidation where controls are commoditised Start with low-risk tools that duplicate basic functions, then measure whether the move reduces administrative overhead and improves access visibility.
• Preserve separation around privileged functions Keep privileged administration, policy changes, and audit access separated even when platforms are consolidated, so one admin path does not govern everything.

What's in the full article

JumpCloud's full guide covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:

• The vendor-by-vendor rationale for consolidating identity and security tools into a single platform
• The two-step framework for identifying routine items and reinvesting savings into strategic security initiatives
• The procurement and renewal angles behind reducing contract sprawl and support overhead
• The platform positioning and licensing implications of replacing multiple niche tools with one control plane

👉 Read JumpCloud's guide to vendor consolidation in IT security →

Vendor sprawl and identity governance: what IAM teams should re-evaluate?

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