Why do insurers focus so heavily on privileged access management?

Why This Matters for Security Teams

Insurers focus on privileged access management because privileged access is where a small control gap becomes a large, measurable loss event. When an organisation cannot prove who can elevate, when that elevation is allowed, and how quickly it can be revoked, underwriting assumptions weaken fast. The risk is not limited to administrators. Service accounts, API keys, and other NHIs often act with equivalent power, which is why NHIs are treated as a core exposure in OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 and in the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0.

NHI Management Group’s research points to the scale of the issue: 97% of NHIs carry excessive privileges, and only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts, which means insurers are rarely looking at theoretical risk. They are looking at whether the insured can actually constrain blast radius before a claim becomes a breach. That is why PAM is often treated as an indicator of operational discipline, not just an access product. In practice, many security teams encounter privilege abuse only after an incident has already demonstrated that access was broader than anyone documented.

How It Works in Practice

In underwriting terms, PAM signals whether privileged access is governed as a controlled exception or as a standing entitlement. Mature programs reduce uncertainty by combining vaulting, approval workflows, session monitoring, and revocation into a repeatable process. For human administrators, that means elevation should be time-bound and auditable. For NHIs, the same logic extends to workload identity, short-lived tokens, and automated revocation, because long-lived secrets behave like permanent admin accounts when they are reused across pipelines, services, and environments.

Practically, insurers look for evidence that access is managed at the moment of use, not just at account creation. That aligns with current guidance in the Ultimate Guide to NHIs and the Ultimate Guide to NHIs — Lifecycle Processes for Managing NHIs, which both emphasise lifecycle control, rotation, and offboarding. Underwriters tend to view the following as positive indicators:

• Just-in-time elevation instead of permanent admin rights
• Centralised vaulting for secrets, certificates, and tokens
• Session recording or command-level logging for privileged actions
• Automated rotation and expiry for service account credentials
• Clear ownership for each privileged identity and workload

That model matters because insurers are pricing the likelihood that an attacker can take over an identity and move laterally. When privileged access is bound to a short-lived workflow and backed by telemetry, the organisation can show containment. These controls tend to break down in CI/CD-heavy environments with unmanaged service accounts and shared secrets because privilege is embedded in automation paths that teams do not review as frequently as human admin access.

Common Variations and Edge Cases

Tighter privileged access control often increases operational overhead, requiring organisations to balance reduced exposure against deployment speed and support burden. Best practice is evolving for NHIs, especially where automation must keep running without waiting for manual approvals. In those environments, insurers usually care less about whether PAM is used exactly like it is for humans and more about whether equivalent control outcomes exist: short-lived credentials, scoped tokens, traceable ownership, and rapid revocation.

There is no universal standard for this yet. Some organisations implement PAM primarily for interactive admins and use workload identity systems for machine access. Others try to force all secrets through a vault even when the architecture does not support it well. The underwriting question is whether the control model reduces standing privilege in a credible way. That is why the Top 10 NHI Issues is so often relevant alongside traditional PAM discussions, especially when secrets are embedded in code, shared across environments, or exposed to third parties.

In short, insurers reward organisations that can demonstrate control over high-risk access paths, not just policy language. When service accounts, API keys, and admin roles are all governed under one privilege model, the risk picture becomes easier to validate and price.

Related resources from NHI Mgmt Group

• Why do privileged access controls matter so much to cyber insurers?
• Who should own stale privileged access cleanup?
• What breaks when access management stops at SSO and MFA?
• How should security teams govern privileged access after authentication?