The informal actions users take when approved access processes are too slow, complex, or inconvenient. In identity governance, workaround behaviour is a control signal because it shows that the designed security path is not the path users actually follow.
Expanded Definition
Workaround behaviour describes the informal paths users create when approved access workflows are too slow, too rigid, or too hard to complete. In identity governance, it is not just a productivity issue. It is evidence that the control design and the operating reality have diverged.
In NHI and IAM environments, workaround behaviour often appears when teams bypass formal request, approval, or rotation steps to keep automation moving. That can include sharing credentials, reusing service accounts, hardcoding secrets, or asking for broad standing access instead of time-bound access. The concept overlaps with policy friction, but it is broader because it captures the human response to friction rather than the policy itself. The NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 reinforces that governance must support usable, repeatable controls, not just documented ones. Where standards are silent, definitions vary across vendors, but the security meaning is consistent: when users cannot follow the designed path, they invent a different one.
The most common misapplication is treating workaround behaviour as simple noncompliance, when the real condition is that the approved process is too slow or operationally mismatched for the task.
Examples and Use Cases
Implementing controls rigorously often introduces approval latency and operational overhead, requiring organisations to weigh stronger governance against the risk that teams will quietly bypass it to meet delivery deadlines.
- A platform team shares one API key across multiple jobs because the formal request process for per-service credentials takes days instead of minutes.
- A developer stores a secret in a CI/CD variable or code comment after repeated failures to get access to a secrets manager in time for deployment.
- An operations group keeps a privileged service account permanently enabled because just-in-time access requests create outages during incident response.
- A data pipeline owner copies a token into a shared document so a contractor can finish work without waiting for an approval chain to close.
- Teams create shadow approval paths in chat channels because the official ticketing process is too slow for urgent rotations and offboarding tasks.
These patterns are visible in the Ultimate Guide to NHIs, which shows how weak lifecycle controls and poor visibility create pressure for informal exceptions. They also map cleanly to identity governance principles in the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0, where control design must be operationally sustainable.
Why It Matters in NHI Security
Workaround behaviour is a leading indicator of control failure because it reveals where users have already decided the official process is not workable. In NHI programs, that matters because service accounts, API keys, certificates, and automation tokens are often deployed under time pressure and then left in place. The result is secret sprawl, excessive privilege, and weak traceability. NHI Mgmt Group reports that Ultimate Guide to NHIs notes 97% of NHIs carry excessive privileges, and only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into service accounts, which makes informal access paths especially dangerous.
That risk is not theoretical. When teams bypass the intended access model, offboarding, rotation, and audit trails all degrade at the same time. The problem is also relevant to the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0, because governance only works when it aligns with real workflows and account lifecycle enforcement. Organisations typically encounter the cost of workaround behaviour only after a secret leak, privilege abuse, or failed audit, at which point the informal path has already become operationally unavoidable to address.
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 CSF 2.0 set the governance and control requirements practitioners need to meet.
| Framework | Control / Reference | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 | NHI-02 | Workarounds often emerge from poor secret handling and access friction. |
| NIST CSF 2.0 | PR.AC-1 | Access is only effective when the real workflow matches the approved one. |
| NIST CSF 2.0 | GV.PO-1 | Policy must reflect operational reality or users create informal exceptions. |
Reduce secret sprawl and simplify approved access paths so users do not bypass controls.
Related resources from NHI Mgmt Group
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Reviewed and updated by the NHIMG editorial team on June 12, 2026.
NHI Mgmt Group — the #1 independent authority on Non-Human Identity, IAM, and Agentic AI security. nhimg.org
