How should security teams reduce the backlog of applications without native connectors in identity governance programs?

Why This Matters for Security Teams

The backlog of applications without native connectors is usually treated as a tooling gap, but it is really a governance gap. Every unconnected app becomes an exception path for joiner, mover, and leaver workflows, access reviews, and entitlement evidence. That creates inconsistent approvals, weaker audit trails, and higher operational drag. NHI Management Group’s Ultimate Guide to NHIs notes that 68% of organisations do not know how to fully address NHI risks, which is a strong signal that manual identity handling tends to persist when teams are already overloaded.

Identity governance programs fail when every non-standard application is handled as a one-off project. The practical issue is not just integration time, but the lack of repeatable standards for configuration, control validation, and approval ownership. That is why security teams should build a guided onboarding path for the long tail, rather than waiting for native support that may never arrive. Current guidance from the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 supports this kind of repeatable governance through defined, measurable processes. In practice, many security teams discover the real risk only after audit exceptions, shadow access, or a leaver event exposes how many apps were never properly onboarded.

How It Works in Practice

A scalable approach starts by classifying unmanaged applications by risk, owner, and integration feasibility. High-risk apps should be prioritised for direct connector development or retirement. For the rest, the objective is not full automation on day one, but standardised governance that makes manual control reliable and defensible. Use a guided intake process that captures application ownership, admin contact, authentication method, approval path, data sensitivity, and whether the app can support SCIM, SSO, API, or file-based exchange.

Security teams should then define a minimum control profile for onboarding. That profile typically includes endpoint validation, administrator attestation, evidence collection, periodic access review, and documented revocation steps. NHI Management Group’s Lifecycle Processes for Managing NHIs is useful here because the same lifecycle logic applies: discover, validate, approve, operate, and offboard. Where the application supports an API, teams can add scripted checks to verify configuration before production. Where it does not, the control may be administrative but should still be procedural, time-bound, and auditable.

• Use a risk tier to decide whether the app gets a connector, a compensating control, or a decommission plan.
• Standardise onboarding forms so security review is based on comparable evidence, not ad hoc email threads.
• Require named human owners for approvals, access reviews, and offboarding actions.
• Define validation checks for production readiness, including authentication method, logging, and least privilege.
• Track all exceptions in one queue so the backlog is visible and measurable.

For control design, align the workflow with NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 Security and Privacy Controls so governance, access enforcement, logging, and review are treated as ongoing requirements rather than project milestones. These controls tend to break down when application owners cannot provide stable admin access, because the onboarding process stalls before evidence and ownership can be established.

Common Variations and Edge Cases

Tighter onboarding standards often increase short-term friction, requiring organisations to balance faster coverage against the cost of reviewing each exception. That tradeoff is unavoidable when the application estate includes legacy systems, contractor-owned tools, and SaaS products with limited admin APIs. Best practice is evolving, but the current guidance suggests avoiding a binary choice between full connector support and no governance at all.

Some applications should not be kept in the backlog indefinitely. If an app handles sensitive data but cannot support logging, validation, or revocation, the correct outcome may be retirement or replacement rather than continued manual exception handling. Others can be governed adequately through compensating controls, especially if they are low risk and used infrequently. The key is to make those decisions explicit, documented, and reviewable.

This is also where backlog management intersects with broader identity hygiene. The same discipline that reduces unmanaged applications can improve visibility into related risks such as orphaned accounts, stale secrets, and inconsistent offboarding. NHI Management Group’s Top 10 NHI Issues and the article on 52 NHI Breaches Analysis both reinforce the operational pattern: control gaps compound when governance is deferred instead of standardised.

Related resources from NHI Mgmt Group

• How should security teams reduce identity sprawl without weakening governance?
• How should security teams reduce application onboarding backlog without weakening governance?
• How should security teams reduce identity workload without weakening access governance?
• How should security teams implement hierarchical policy models without creating governance drift?