Yes. Organisations should start with a governance layer that gives them visibility into identities, entitlements, and application access, then extend privileged controls where the highest risk exists. That sequence helps teams establish policy, approvals, and review discipline before they manage elevated access at scale. It also makes later PAM expansion easier to operationalise.
Why This Matters for Security Teams
Prioritising cloud identity governance first gives security teams a complete picture of who and what can reach applications before they extend privileged access controls into the highest-risk paths. That matters because application access is often fragmented across cloud IAM, SaaS entitlements, service accounts, and secrets stores. Without governance, PAM expansion can become a narrow elevation project that misses the broader identity surface.
The control gap is especially visible in non-human identities. NHIMG’s Ultimate Guide to NHIs notes that only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts, while 97% of NHIs carry excessive privileges. That is why least privilege cannot be enforced reliably if identity ownership, entitlement review, and application access paths are still opaque. External guidance from the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 also places governance, asset understanding, and access control as linked functions rather than separate initiatives.
In practice, many security teams discover the real access graph only after a breach review, not through intentional design.
How It Works in Practice
A practical sequence starts with identity governance, then moves to privileged controls where risk and business criticality justify the effort. The first step is to establish authoritative identity data for humans, service accounts, API keys, and cloud workloads. That includes ownership, entitlement catalogs, approval workflows, and periodic review. Once teams can answer who has access to what, PAM can be focused on the applications and systems where privilege actually changes the blast radius.
This approach aligns with the OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10, which treats weak lifecycle control, secret sprawl, and over-privilege as recurring failure modes. It also reflects NHIMG guidance in the Ultimate Guide to NHIs, where lifecycle discipline is foundational to reducing exposure. In operational terms:
- build a central inventory of identities and application entitlements
- classify which applications handle sensitive data or privileged actions
- define approval and review workflows before expanding elevation paths
- use PAM for admin sessions, break-glass access, and high-value systems
- tie secrets rotation and offboarding to identity ownership rather than ad hoc cleanup
Where possible, pair governance with policy-based access decisions so access is evaluated consistently at request time, but do not skip the inventory and review layer that makes those decisions auditable. These controls tend to break down in fast-moving SaaS environments because entitlements change faster than review cadences and ownership is frequently unclear.
Common Variations and Edge Cases
Tighter governance often increases administrative overhead, requiring organisations to balance visibility gains against delivery speed and platform complexity. That tradeoff is real, especially in cloud-native and DevOps-heavy environments where teams rely on temporary workloads, federated access, and automated deployments. Current guidance suggests starting with the identities and applications that create the largest privilege concentration, rather than trying to boil the ocean.
There is no universal standard for sequencing PAM and identity governance across every application family. For regulated workloads, high-value production systems, and externally exposed secrets, privileged controls may need to move in parallel with governance. For lower-risk internal apps, entitlement reviews and ownership mapping may be enough until the access model matures. NHIMG’s Top 10 NHI Issues highlights why this matters: organisations often have excess privilege, poor rotation discipline, and incomplete service account visibility at the same time.
One practical exception is where applications already enforce strong short-lived authentication and fine-grained authorization through platform controls. In those cases, PAM can focus on exception handling and emergency access rather than broad session mediation. Even then, the underlying identity governance layer is still needed to keep approvals, ownership, and access reviews defensible.
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 and CSA MAESTRO address the attack and risk surface, while NIST CSF 2.0, NIST SP 800-63 and NIST Zero Trust (SP 800-207) set the governance and control requirements practitioners need to meet.
| Framework | Control / Reference | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 | NHI-01 | Identity inventory and entitlement visibility are core to controlling NHI sprawl. |
| NIST CSF 2.0 | PR.AA-02 | Identity management and access governance underpin least privilege across applications. |
| NIST SP 800-63 | Digital identity assurance supports stronger governance over cloud and app access. | |
| NIST Zero Trust (SP 800-207) | Zero Trust requires explicit verification of identity and access at every request. | |
| CSA MAESTRO | MAESTRO emphasizes governing agent and workload identities before privilege expansion. |
Map workload and application access paths, then add privileged controls where blast radius is highest.
Related resources from NHI Mgmt Group
- Which identity controls should teams prioritise before expanding cloud access?
- Should organisations prioritise identity governance before expanding agentic AI?
- Should organisations prioritise token controls before expanding SaaS access?
- Should organisations prioritise SaaS cleanup before expanding access controls?
Deepen Your Knowledge
Reviewed and updated by the NHIMG editorial team on August 27, 2026.
NHI Mgmt Group — the #1 independent authority on Non-Human Identity, IAM, and Agentic AI security. nhimg.org
