Why do overprivileged accounts and fragmented SaaS access create so much risk?

Why This Matters for Security Teams

Overprivileged accounts are not just an IAM hygiene issue. In SaaS-heavy environments, they become a compound risk because access is spread across platforms, delegated through apps, and often invisible to the teams that must govern it. When permissions are not centrally understood, entitlement creep can persist long after the original business need has changed. The result is a larger blast radius, slower revocation, and more opportunities for lateral movement across cloud services. Guidance from NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 and NHIMG research on Ultimate Guide to NHIs both point to the same operational reality: visibility and ownership matter as much as technical access controls.

The risk increases further when SaaS permissions are granted through integrations, service accounts, and delegated tokens that outlive the workflow they were created for. According to Entro Security in The 2025 State of NHIs and Secrets in Cybersecurity, 60% of NHIs are overused, with the same identity used by more than one application. That kind of sharing makes a single compromise far more consequential than a typical user account issue. In practice, many security teams discover the problem only after a dormant permission has already been used to move into a sensitive SaaS workspace.

How It Works in Practice

Fragmented SaaS access becomes risky because every application tends to create its own authorization layer, its own admin model, and its own audit trail. Security teams may have SSO in place, but SSO alone does not prevent excessive privilege inside each app. A user can be “authenticated” centrally while still holding broad roles, legacy group memberships, or hidden app-specific grants that no one reviews. That is why OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 and NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 Security and Privacy Controls both emphasize least privilege, lifecycle control, and continuous review.

Operationally, teams need to answer four questions for every account and every SaaS integration: who owns it, what can it do, where is it used, and when should it expire. That means inventorying privileged users, third-party app connections, OAuth grants, API keys, and admin delegation paths. It also means separating human access from service access, so a person does not become the permanent caretaker of a long-lived token or shared admin role.

• Map SaaS roles to business functions instead of copying default admin templates.
• Review privileged groups, app tokens, and delegated scopes on a fixed cadence.
• Remove stale access when the workflow, owner, or application changes.
• Log high-risk actions such as permission grants, token creation, and admin elevation.

NHIMG’s 52 NHI Breaches Analysis shows how quickly token sprawl and weak lifecycle control turn into real incidents, not theoretical exposure. These controls tend to break down when SaaS permissions are granted through dozens of tenant-specific apps because ownership, revocation, and audit evidence become fragmented across systems.

Common Variations and Edge Cases

Tighter access control often increases administrative overhead, requiring organisations to balance revocation speed against business continuity. That tradeoff is especially visible in SaaS ecosystems with many integrations, where a broken permission can interrupt sales, support, or engineering workflows. Best practice is evolving, but current guidance suggests treating high-risk access differently from routine collaboration access and applying stronger governance to admin roles, OAuth grants, and service accounts.

Not every overprivileged account looks like a super-admin. Some of the most dangerous cases are “normal” users who have accumulated access through project work, temporary escalations, or app-to-app delegation that was never unwound. The issue also appears in shadow IT, where teams connect new SaaS tools without central approval, creating duplicate identity stores and inconsistent policy enforcement. NHIMG’s Top 10 NHI Issues and the vendor research in The 2024 ESG Report: Managing Non-Human Identities both highlight how quickly governance gaps turn into repeated compromise events.

Where this guidance breaks down most often is in large SaaS estates with many independently managed business units, because no single team has a complete view of roles, tokens, and delegated access. In those environments, the most effective control is not just a one-time cleanup, but an ongoing process that ties ownership, approval, and expiry to every privileged path.

Related resources from NHI Mgmt Group

• Why do group-based access models create hidden access risk in SaaS environments?
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• Why do standing privileges and delayed offboarding create so much risk in access control programmes?
• Why do shared accounts and standing permissions create so much operational risk in cloud identity programmes?