Topic starter
22/02/2026 9:52 pm
TL;DR: Enterprises are treating identity as the primary control plane because attackers increasingly use stolen credentials, abused tokens, and excessive privileges to bypass perimeter defenses, according to Omada Identity. The practical implication is that governance, access management, PAM, and NHI controls must work as one continuous risk discipline, not isolated projects.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Omada Identity: “The Pillars of Identity Security: A Practical Guide to Protecting Every Account”.
Key questions
Q: What breaks when identity governance is spread across too many vendor tools?
A: Lifecycle operations become inconsistent, audit trails become incomplete and deprovisioning becomes slower.
Q: Why do excessive privileges create so much access risk?
A: Excessive privileges increase risk because any compromised or misused account can reach more systems, data, and workflows than it should.
Q: What are the warning signs that identity security is not actually under control?
A: Common warning signs include unowned entitlements, stale access approvals, inconsistent MFA coverage, standing admin rights, and non-human identities with no clear lifecycle owner.
Practitioner guidance
- Establish an authoritative access inventory Create a consolidated view of human, third-party, and non-human identities across directories, cloud platforms, and SaaS applications.
- Automate joiner-mover-leaver workflows Tie lifecycle events to access changes so entitlements are granted, adjusted, and removed through business-owned policy rather than manual cleanup.
- Move privileged access to just-in-time elevation Eliminate standing privilege for administrative accounts and require ephemeral elevation for high-risk actions.
Bottom line: Identity security has moved to the centre of enterprise defence because authenticated abuse now bypasses many perimeter assumptions.
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11/10/2026 2:50 am
Identity security is now the enterprise control plane, not a supporting control. Cloud, SaaS, and hybrid operating models have pushed authentication and authorisation decisions to the centre of enterprise risk. Once identity becomes the system that brokers access everywhere else, weak governance stops being a local IAM problem and becomes a business-wide exposure. Practitioners should treat identity control as an enterprise architecture concern, not a back-office administration task.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How should teams balance IGA, PAM, and NHI governance in one programme?
A: Use IGA as the authoritative layer, PAM to contain high-risk elevation, and NHI governance to cover service accounts, API keys, and workload identities. The balance is not about separate projects but about one operating model that keeps entitlement data, runtime enforcement, and lifecycle control aligned.
👉 Read our full editorial: Identity security is now the enterprise control plane