Topic starter
23/06/2026 9:21 pm
TL;DR: Enterprises are accumulating IAM, IGA, PAM, directory, and NHI tools that each model identity differently, creating fragmented visibility and unmanaged aliasing across systems, according to AuthMind. The real problem is not account volume but broken correlation, which leaves privilege escalation paths and shadow access hidden from governance.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by AuthMind: “The Great Identity Disconnect: How Siloed Identity Systems Undermine Enterprise Security”.
Key questions
Q: What breaks when external identity data is spread across multiple systems?
A: When external identity data is fragmented, teams lose a reliable view of who has access, who approved it, and whether the relationship is still active.
Q: Why do fragmented identity records and excessive privileges create so much operational risk?
A: When identity data is scattered, teams cannot reliably see who or what has access, which makes governance weak and remediation slow.
Q: How can security teams detect shadow access across IAM, PAM, and directory tools?
A: They need correlation logic that links aliases, local accounts, and activity logs back to one accountable identity.
Practitioner guidance
- Map identity aliases across systems Inventory where the same person, service account, or NHI appears under different IDs in directories, cloud accounts, PAM, and local systems, then reconcile ownership and privilege lineage.
- Trace ownership of shadow accounts Identify unmanaged local accounts, legacy admin accounts, and machine identities that lack a clear owner and assign a remediation path for each.
- Review cross-platform privilege overlap Compare entitlements across IAM, IGA, PAM, and application-specific directories to find accounts that accumulate separable rights in different estates.
Bottom line: Identity sprawl is less about the number of accounts than the organisation’s inability to correlate them back to one accountable actor.
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25/06/2026 2:37 am
Identity correlation, not account inventory, is now the core governance problem. Enterprises already know they have too many identities. The harder failure is that no single control plane can reliably prove which human, service account, or NHI alias belongs to the same actor across tools and environments. That breaks access review, offboarding, and privilege analysis at the point where they are supposed to converge. Practitioners should treat correlation as a first-class governance requirement, not an analytics enhancement.
A few things that frame the scale:
- Organisations maintain an average of 6 distinct secrets manager instances, creating fragmentation that undermines centralised control, according to the State of Secrets in AppSec.
A question worth separating out:
Q: When should organisations prioritise identity visibility over more point tools?
A: Organisations should prioritise identity visibility when existing tools still cannot answer basic questions about who has access, where privilege is excessive, or how broad the blast radius is. At that point, adding more point controls usually increases data fragmentation instead of improving governance.
👉 Read our full editorial: Identity sprawl is breaking correlation across human and machine access