The strongest approach is to consolidate core identity, access, and device controls into one operating model, then connect only the systems that still need to remain separate. That reduces context switching, lowers administrative overhead, and makes policy enforcement more consistent across office, hybrid, and remote users. Centralisation works best when automation handles routine lifecycle tasks and exceptions are documented.
How to reduce tool sprawl while centralising identity, access, and device management
Centralisation works when you treat identity, access, and device control as one operating model instead of three separate projects. The aim is to make one policy plane authoritative, then keep only the minimum number of specialist systems that are genuinely required for endpoint, cloud, or application functions. That reduces duplicate administration, conflicting policy, and the drift that usually creates tool sprawl.
The practical boundary is integration, not replacement. A modern estate often still needs separate capabilities for MDM, authentication, conditional access, privileged access, and directory services, but those controls should be coordinated through a small set of core systems and shared rules. The more teams can re-use the same identity source, policy logic, and lifecycle events, the less likely they are to create disconnected point solutions.
For teams trying to centralise without overconsolidating, the real test is whether each tool adds unique control value. If two products both manage the same joiner-mover-leaver workflow, access policy, or device posture decision, one is probably redundant. If a tool is retained for a specific function, define its role clearly so it does not become a second shadow control plane.
Where centralisation succeeds and where it breaks down
Centralisation is strongest when it removes repeated decisions: who can sign in, what device is trusted, what privilege is allowed, and when access should expire. It works best when the organisation standardises those decisions around a single identity backbone and then propagates them consistently into downstream systems. That gives users fewer logins, operators fewer consoles, and auditors a cleaner control story.
It starts to break down when teams try to centralise every workflow through one platform that was never designed to own all of them. Device management, for example, may still need separate lifecycle handling from human identity governance, even if the two are linked. The goal is a coordinated control model, not forced product monoculture.
A useful rule is to centralise policy, identity, and governance first, then integrate execution points where they must remain specialised. That keeps the architecture coherent while still allowing the endpoint team, IAM team, and security operations team to preserve the controls they actually need.
How to keep automation useful instead of creating a new layer of complexity
Automation is the main mechanism that makes consolidation sustainable at scale. Without it, centralisation just shifts manual work into a smaller number of overloaded teams. The highest-value automations are routine, low-judgement tasks such as account provisioning, access revocation, device enrolment checks, policy enforcement, and periodic recertification triggers.
Exceptions should be explicit and limited. If a business process needs ad hoc overrides, temporary access, or non-standard device handling, those cases need documented approval paths and review points. Otherwise the exception queue becomes its own sprawl layer, and the central platform stops being the source of truth.
Teams should measure whether automation is reducing manual touchpoints, not just moving them elsewhere. If administrators still need to coordinate the same event across multiple consoles, the stack is centralised in name only. Ultimate Guide to NHIs is useful here because it frames lifecycle, rotation, ownership, and access governance as part of one control system rather than separate hygiene tasks.
Risk and Threat Considerations
Centralisation lowers operational friction, but it also increases the blast radius of misconfiguration, overprivilege, or credential compromise if the core control plane is poorly governed. The main failure pattern is a single integrated stack that is efficient for defenders and equally efficient for an attacker once administrative access is lost.
Failure mechanism: weak separation between policy administration, device trust, and privileged access can let one compromised account or mis-scoped integration change access across many users and endpoints at once.
Impact: the organisation can lose trust in its enrolment, access, or enforcement layer, which turns one control failure into a broad authentication, authorisation, and endpoint-management incident.
Standards & Framework Alignment
This section maps relevant standards and security frameworks to the operational risks and controls described in this guidance.
OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 addresses the attack surface, NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 and CIS Controls v8 set the technical controls, and ISO/IEC 27001:2022 defines the regulatory obligations.
| Framework | Control / Reference | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 | NHI-01 — Improper Offboarding | Centralised lifecycle control must reliably revoke access and retire identities. |
| NHI-05 — Overprivileged NHI | Consolidated control planes fail when too much privilege accumulates in admin and service paths. | |
| NHI-07 — Long-Lived Secrets | Centralised identity and device operations often depend on secrets that need rotation and expiry control. | |
| Recommendation — Centralise offboarding so access revocation and account retirement happen through one governed workflow. Limit administrative and service privileges to the minimum needed for each integrated control path. Replace long-lived secrets with rotated, short-lived credentials wherever the platform supports them. | ||
| NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 | IA-5 — Authenticator Management | Identity centralisation depends on managing authenticators, rotation, and lifecycle consistently. |
| AC-6 — Least Privilege | Consolidated access management must prevent the central platform from becoming overpowered. | |
| CM-2 — Baseline Configuration | Device and identity centralisation need standard baselines to prevent drift across tools. | |
| Recommendation — Apply lifecycle controls to authenticators so issuance, rotation, and revocation stay controlled. Restrict administrative and delegated access to the minimum privileges required. Define and enforce a standard baseline for the core identity and device platforms. | ||
| CIS Controls v8 | CIS-5 — Account Management | Centralising identity and access depends on consistent account lifecycle and review practices. |
| CIS-6 — Access Control Management | The answer is about unifying access decisions while avoiding redundant tools. | |
| Recommendation — Consolidate account lifecycle processes and remove duplicate account administration paths. Use a single access control model and retire duplicate policy enforcement points. | ||
| ISO/IEC 27001:2022 | A.5.15 — Access control | Centralised identity and access governance maps directly to organisation-wide access control policy. |
| A.8.5 — Secure authentication | Central identity management needs consistent authentication handling across connected systems. | |
| Recommendation — Set one access control policy and ensure downstream systems enforce it consistently. Standardise authentication so connected tools rely on the same trusted sign-in process. | ||
Practitioner Guidance
What to prioritise: define one authoritative source for identity and one authoritative source for device trust, then document every downstream system that merely consumes those decisions. Top 10 NHI Issues is a good reminder that excessive permissions, ownership gaps, and lifecycle drift become harder to spot as the environment scales.
What to verify: confirm that access revocation, device quarantine, and account lifecycle changes actually propagate end to end, including hybrid and remote access paths. If a control cannot be proven from one workflow event to one enforcement outcome, it is not truly centralised.
Common mistake: buying a larger suite and calling that simplification. Real simplification comes from removing duplicate decisions, duplicate policy definitions, and duplicate owners, not from replacing many consoles with one console that still requires separate manual operations behind it.
Practitioner takeaway: centralisation should reduce the number of places where trust is decided, while preserving clear boundaries for the few systems that must stay specialised.
Related resources from NHI Mgmt Group
- How should security teams automate identity lifecycle management without creating new access risk?
- How should security teams modernise identity without creating new access sprawl?
- How should security teams scale identity and access management without creating control gaps across millions of users?
- How should security teams implement workload identity federation for AWS access without creating new secret sprawl?
Deepen Your Knowledge
Reviewed and updated by the NHIMG editorial team on September 25, 2026.
NHI Mgmt Group — the #1 independent authority on Non-Human Identity, IAM, and Agentic AI security. nhimg.org
