They often treat centralisation as the same thing as control. A single dashboard is useful, but it does not guarantee that entitlements are reviewed, approvals are valid, or access is removed on time. The control value comes from workflow quality, evidence quality, and coverage across systems.
Why Security Teams Misread Centralised Identity Platforms
Centralised identity platforms are often treated as proof that identity is under control, but a single pane of glass does not automatically mean valid access governance. If approvals are stale, entitlements are overbroad, and revocation is slow, the platform is only concentrating risk. That distinction matters because non-human identities scale faster than human review processes can keep up.
NHI Management Group’s Ultimate Guide to NHIs notes that NHIs outnumber human identities by 25x to 50x in modern enterprises, and only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts. That gap explains why centralisation can look reassuring while leaving entire classes of credentials unmanaged. The control problem is not where identity data sits, but whether the organisation can prove who approved what, when it expired, and whether it was removed everywhere it existed.
The NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 reinforces that governance depends on operational execution, not just asset consolidation. In practice, many security teams encounter identity sprawl only after a leaked key, dormant account, or excessive privilege path has already been exploited, rather than through intentional access review.
What Centralisation Actually Changes in Practice
Centralisation can improve discovery, workflow routing, and audit evidence, but it does not replace control design. Mature identity programmes use the platform to coordinate lifecycle actions across cloud, SaaS, CI/CD, and infrastructure, while still enforcing least privilege, periodic review, and automated offboarding. The value comes from coverage and enforcement, not dashboard aesthetics.
Practically, teams should treat the platform as an orchestration layer for identity hygiene:
- Map every service account, API key, certificate, and token to an owner and system of record.
- Use policy-driven approvals with time-bound access rather than open-ended grants.
- Reconcile entitlements continuously against actual usage, not only during quarterly reviews.
- Automate revocation when a workload is retired, rotated, or migrated.
- Retain evidence for who approved access, what changed, and whether the change propagated to all connected systems.
This is where the 2024 State of Secrets Management Survey is useful: 54% of organisations say they are dissatisfied with their current secrets management solution because not all secrets are secured, and 43% cite lack of central management. That combination shows the common failure mode. Central management without coverage simply creates a cleaner interface for incomplete control.
Good programmes align the platform to the NIST framework’s identify, protect, and govern functions, then verify that every entitlement change is enforced end to end. These controls tend to break down in hybrid environments with legacy applications, shadow IT, and shared admin accounts because policy cannot be enforced consistently across systems that do not expose the same lifecycle hooks.
Where the Assumptions Break Down
Tighter centralisation often increases operational overhead, requiring organisations to balance visibility gains against integration cost and exception handling. Best practice is evolving here: there is no universal standard that says one identity platform can fully govern every workload type without compensating controls.
The biggest edge case is credential sprawl outside the platform. Secrets embedded in code, CI/CD variables, local files, and unmanaged vaults can bypass central review entirely. NHI Management Group’s Top 10 NHI Issues research is relevant because it highlights how excessive privilege, weak rotation, and incomplete visibility persist even in organisations that believe they have standardised identity. Centralisation also breaks down when teams confuse approval workflow with approval quality: a fast approval path is not the same thing as a justified entitlement.
The practical takeaway is that central identity platforms should be measured by revocation speed, entitlement accuracy, and coverage across all identity-bearing systems. If those metrics are missing, the organisation has centralised administration, not centralised control.
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 AI RMF set the governance and control requirements practitioners need to meet.
| Framework | Control / Reference | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 | NHI-01 | Covers NHI inventory and visibility gaps that central platforms often hide. |
| NIST CSF 2.0 | PR.AC-4 | Addresses access control, entitlement review, and least privilege enforcement. |
| NIST AI RMF | Govern function applies where automated identity decisions need accountability and oversight. |
Tie central platform approvals to least-privilege checks and continuous entitlement recertification.
Related resources from NHI Mgmt Group
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Reviewed and updated by the NHIMG editorial team on June 11, 2026.
NHI Mgmt Group — the #1 independent authority on Non-Human Identity, IAM, and Agentic AI security. nhimg.org
