Review PostgreSQL users by combining direct role listing with membership, privilege, and login checks. A complete review should confirm who can log in, what inherited privileges they receive, and whether the account still has an approved business need. Access review is only useful when it drives revoke or re-certification decisions, not when it stops at enumeration.
Why This Matters for Security Teams
PostgreSQL user review is often treated like a periodic inventory exercise, but access governance only works when it answers three questions at once: who can authenticate, what they can inherit through role membership, and whether that access is still justified. That is why reviews need to align with lifecycle control, not just directory hygiene, as outlined in Ultimate Guide to NHIs — Lifecycle Processes for Managing NHIs.
Teams usually miss inherited privileges because PostgreSQL makes role chaining easy to overlook, especially when login roles and permission roles are separated. The result is a review that appears complete on paper but leaves dormant accounts, broad group membership, and unused superuser-like access untouched. That is exactly the kind of gap highlighted in Top 10 NHI Issues, where over-privilege and weak lifecycle controls keep showing up together.
For broader control mapping, NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 reinforces that identity governance must support ongoing access decisions, not one-time approvals. In practice, many security teams discover overbroad PostgreSQL access only after a service account has been reused across environments or a role change has never been recertified.
How It Works in Practice
A practical PostgreSQL access review starts by separating identity from privilege. First identify all login-capable roles, then enumerate role membership, inherited rights, object-level grants, and any special administrative capabilities. PostgreSQL’s role model means a user may have no direct grants yet still receive broad access through nested memberships, default privileges, or inherited group roles. A simple user list is therefore incomplete.
Security teams should compare each login role against an approved business purpose and an owner who can attest to it. Then they should verify whether the account is human, service-oriented, or an application credential, because review criteria differ. Human accounts should usually be tied to employment status and job function. Non-human accounts should be tied to workload ownership, rotation, and a documented system dependency, not just a named person.
The review process becomes more reliable when it includes:
- Direct login status checks, so disabled or unused accounts can be removed.
- Role membership expansion, so inherited privileges are visible.
- Privilege review by schema, table, function, and administrative capability.
- Recertification decisions, so every retained account has an explicit approver.
- Revoke actions for stale, unowned, or over-privileged roles.
For evidence-based governance, teams can pair database review with the NHI lifecycle guidance in Ultimate Guide to NHIs — Regulatory and Audit Perspectives and the threat context in 52 NHI Breaches Analysis. Current guidance suggests that access reviews should be run from authoritative source data, then validated against PostgreSQL configuration rather than inferred from ticket history alone. These controls tend to break down in environments with nested application roles and shared service accounts because ownership and effective access are no longer traceable to a single approver.
Common Variations and Edge Cases
Tighter PostgreSQL access governance often increases operational overhead, requiring organisations to balance review depth against release speed and admin effort. That tradeoff is most visible when databases support mixed human, application, and automation workloads.
One common edge case is shared service accounts. If multiple systems use the same PostgreSQL login, a normal recertification process may not identify the real owner. Current guidance suggests replacing shared logins with workload-specific identities where possible, then reviewing each identity against a single system or integration. Another edge case is role inheritance across environments. A role that is safe in development may be excessive in production because schema scope, data sensitivity, and break-glass expectations differ.
Another issue is that PostgreSQL permissions can appear low risk until default privileges or SECURITY DEFINER functions are considered. That is why effective review must look beyond direct GRANTs. Best practice is evolving toward periodic reassessment of both standing access and the administrative paths that create hidden privilege. Where teams have already adopted database-as-code, access review should also verify that live grants match declared intent in source control.
For organisations formalising this work, the control objectives in OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 are especially relevant when PostgreSQL accounts are used by services, jobs, or agents. The practical rule is simple: if the account cannot be owned, justified, and removed on schedule, it is not governed.
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 address the attack and risk surface, while NIST CSF 2.0 and NIST CSF 2.0 set the governance and control requirements practitioners need to meet.
| Framework | Control / Reference | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 | NHI-01 | Covers over-privileged and unmanaged non-human database accounts. |
| NIST CSF 2.0 | PR.AA-01 | Identity proofing and access management underpin who may retain PostgreSQL access. |
| NIST CSF 2.0 | PR.AC-4 | Least-privilege access review is central to effective PostgreSQL governance. |
Review PostgreSQL roles for ownership, scope, and necessity, then revoke access that lacks a current business justification.
Related resources from NHI Mgmt Group
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Reviewed and updated by the NHIMG editorial team on June 7, 2026.
NHI Mgmt Group — the #1 independent authority on Non-Human Identity, IAM, and Agentic AI security. nhimg.org
