Modernisation increases access risk because it compresses more policy, claims, and finance activity into fewer platforms and more connected workflows. If identities are broad, reused, or poorly owned, a single compromise or stale entitlement can affect multiple business processes. The risk is not the cloud itself, but the larger blast radius created by integration and automation.
Why This Matters for Security Teams
Insurance modernisation changes the access problem from a few controlled systems to a denser network of policy, claims, billing, document, analytics, and partner integrations. That means the security team is no longer only reviewing who can log in, but also how service accounts, API keys, and workflow identities move across environments. The practical risk is that access becomes reused faster than it is reviewed, especially when delivery teams optimise for speed.
This is why NHI governance matters in modernisation programmes. NHIM Group’s research shows that 97% of NHIs carry excessive privileges, which is a direct indicator that broad entitlements are still the default in many environments. The issue is visible in the Ultimate Guide to NHIs — Key Challenges and Risks, and it aligns with the access control concerns documented in the OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10. In practice, many security teams encounter overbroad access only after a workflow or integration has already been reused across multiple lines of business.
How It Works in Practice
The access risk rises because modernisation often collapses boundaries that used to be separate. A claims workflow may now call policy data, fraud analytics, payment services, and external document tools in one chain. Each step can introduce a new non-human identity, and each identity may inherit permissions from templates, copied roles, or shared secrets. When those identities are not explicitly owned, reviewed, and rotated, they become persistent access paths rather than temporary technical accounts.
Current guidance suggests treating these identities as first-class assets, not implementation details. That means:
- Assigning a clear owner for every service account, API key, certificate, and automation token.
- Replacing broad static roles with least-privilege access tied to the exact workflow or service function.
- Using short-lived credentials where possible, with rotation and revocation built into deployment and offboarding.
- Monitoring for secrets stored in code, CI/CD tooling, config files, and shared vaults that are misconfigured or overexposed.
- Reviewing partner and third-party integrations as part of the access model, not as a separate vendor-risk exercise.
This matters because modernisation does not just increase the number of systems; it increases the blast radius of each credential. NHIM Group notes in its Ultimate Guide to NHIs that only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts, which helps explain why access reviews often miss the most dangerous identities. The baseline control model in the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 supports this by pushing organisations toward asset visibility, access governance, and continuous monitoring. These controls tend to break down when legacy policy administration, claims engines, and cloud automation all share the same credential patterns because ownership and revocation become ambiguous.
Common Variations and Edge Cases
Tighter access control often increases operational overhead, requiring organisations to balance speed of delivery against review, rotation, and exception handling. In insurance environments, that tradeoff shows up most clearly during policy migrations, M&A integration, and broker or reinsurer connectivity, where teams are tempted to reuse existing access to avoid delays.
Best practice is evolving, but the pattern is clear: shared secrets, long-lived tokens, and inherited admin rights are especially risky in automation-heavy programmes. A “lift and shift” modernisation can preserve legacy access flaws while making them harder to see. That is why some teams now separate production automation identities from human support access and require time-bound approval for elevated actions, though there is no universal standard for this yet.
One useful indicator is whether the identity can be offboarded cleanly when a workflow is retired. If the answer is no, the access model is already too sticky. NHIM Group research also shows that 71% of NHIs are not rotated within recommended time frames, which is particularly relevant in long-running insurance platforms where integrations persist for years. For deeper context, see the Top 10 NHI Issues. Organisations with heavy third-party participation face the hardest edge case, because partner access is often embedded into business process design before security reviews happen.
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-03 | Insurance modernisation often creates long-lived, overprivileged non-human access. |
| NIST CSF 2.0 | PR.AC-4 | Directly addresses least-privilege access across interconnected insurance workflows. |
| NIST AI RMF | Modernised insurance systems use more automation, raising governance and accountability needs. |
Use AI RMF governance practices to define ownership, oversight, and accountability for automated access paths.
Related resources from NHI Mgmt Group
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Reviewed and updated by the NHIMG editorial team on July 8, 2026.
NHI Mgmt Group — the #1 independent authority on Non-Human Identity, IAM, and Agentic AI security. nhimg.org
