What should IAM leaders do before automating more access processes?

Why This Matters for Security Teams

Automation magnifies whatever already exists in an access process. If approvals are inconsistent, ownership is unclear, or local exceptions are undocumented, tooling simply makes those weaknesses faster and harder to spot. That is why IAM leaders should treat automation as a control multiplier, not a cleanup strategy. Current guidance from the OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 and NHIMG research such as the Ultimate Guide to NHIs both point to the same operational reality: access sprawl is usually a process problem before it is a tooling problem.

The risk is not limited to overprovisioning. When teams automate a workflow that has multiple approval paths, hidden manual overrides, or unclear ownership, they create a false sense of control and reduce auditability. NHIMG’s research shows that Ultimate Guide to NHIs — Key Challenges and Risks reports 88.5% of organisations say their non-human IAM practices lag behind or merely match their human IAM efforts, which is a strong signal that many teams are scaling immaturity rather than discipline. In practice, many security teams encounter process drift only after automation has already amplified it across service accounts, APIs, and third-party integrations.

How It Works in Practice

Before automating access requests, reviews, or revocation, leaders should map the actual workflow as it operates today, not as policy says it should operate. Start by identifying who owns each decision, where exceptions are granted, what evidence is required, and which steps still rely on tribal knowledge. This is especially important for Lifecycle Processes for Managing NHIs, because non-human identities often move faster than documentation catches up.

A practical sequence looks like this:

• Remove duplicate approval paths so one request type has one control path.
• Document ownership for every system, service account, token, and API key.
• Identify local exceptions and decide whether they are legitimate or legacy drift.
• Define the smallest set of standard request categories that covers real demand.
• Automate only after the process can be explained, repeated, and audited without interpretation.

That approach aligns with NIST guidance on governance and access accountability, especially the NIST AI Risk Management Framework principle that controls should be traceable to accountable decisions, even when the workflow is partially automated. It also supports the practical IAM lesson in OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10: secrets, entitlements, and lifecycle actions must be governed consistently before scale is introduced. These controls tend to break down when environments span multiple business units with different approval cultures because the automation layer inherits fragmented ownership and inconsistent exception handling.

Common Variations and Edge Cases

Tighter process standardisation often increases coordination overhead, requiring organisations to balance speed against governance maturity. That tradeoff is real, especially where engineering teams need fast provisioning for CI/CD, cloud workloads, or partner integrations. The best practice is evolving, but current guidance suggests that exceptions should be explicit and temporary rather than embedded in the automated path.

There are legitimate edge cases. A merger may leave two parallel access models in place for a transition period. A regulated environment may require extra approval evidence for specific workloads. A platform team may need temporary carve-outs while a new identity source is onboarded. Those situations do not justify automating the exception itself; they justify documenting the exception, assigning an owner, and setting a retirement date.

NHIMG research in the 2024 Non-Human Identity Security Report found that 59.8% of organisations see value in simplifying non-human access management and introducing dynamic ephemeral credentials, which reinforces a key point: automation should support disciplined lifecycle control, not preserve ad hoc patterns. When leaders skip the cleanup step, they usually discover that “automated access” still requires manual intervention, only now at larger scale and with weaker visibility.

Related resources from NHI Mgmt Group

• How do IAM and NHI programmes adapt when AI services are embedded in business processes?
• How should organisations integrate workforce identity verification into IAM processes?
• How should IAM teams secure shared-device access in regulated environments?
• What should IAM teams do before using AI for role mining?