## The Access Sprawl Problem
Here's an uncomfortable truth about most enterprise environments: nobody actually knows who has access to what. Users accumulate permissions over years of role changes, project assignments, and temporary access grants that never got revoked. Service accounts proliferate beyond any central inventory. Applications granted access during a project continue to have that access long after the project ended.
This access sprawl is a massive security risk. When an account is compromised, the attacker's blast radius is determined by what that account has access to. When a disgruntled employee leaves without proper offboarding, they might retain access to systems for weeks. When an auditor asks which users have access to your most sensitive data, you have no reliable answer.
Identity governance is the discipline of managing user identities and their access rights throughout the identity lifecycle — from initial provisioning through role changes, system additions, and eventually offboarding. Modern IGA platforms make this manageable even in large, complex enterprises.
## Core IGA Capabilities
Access certification (or access review) is the periodic process of having managers and data owners review and confirm that their team members' access is appropriate. Without tooling, this is typically a spreadsheet-based nightmare that rarely gets done properly and generates low-quality results. Modern IGA platforms automate the certification process: identify what each user has access to, route that information to the appropriate reviewer, track decisions, and automatically revoke access where the reviewer certifies it's no longer needed.
Role-based access control (RBAC) management addresses the root cause of access sprawl by defining standard access packages for each role and ensuring users get exactly what their role requires, nothing more. IGA platforms manage the lifecycle of roles — creation, modification, deprecation — and enforce consistency across user populations.
Lifecycle management handles the joiners, movers, and leavers process automatically. When HR updates an employee's department or title, the IGA platform adjusts access automatically based on role mappings. When an employee leaves, all access is revoked immediately and comprehensively — not just their Active Directory account, but access to every application in the portfolio.
Segregation of duties (SoD) enforcement prevents individuals from accumulating combinations of access that create fraud risk. A person who can both create vendors and approve payments, or both create and approve purchase orders, represents a segregation of duties violation. IGA platforms detect and report these violations and can prevent them from occurring in the first place.
## Entitlement Management for Cloud Applications
The traditional IGA challenge was managing access to on-premises applications. The modern challenge is doing the same for SaaS applications, cloud services, and APIs — where access control is often more complex and less standardised.
Microsoft's Entra ID Governance (formerly Azure AD Identity Governance) provides native lifecycle management for Microsoft 365 and Azure, plus integration with hundreds of third-party SaaS applications. For organisations heavily invested in the Microsoft ecosystem, this is often the most practical path.
For multi-cloud and multi-vendor environments, dedicated IGA platforms like SailPoint, Saviynt, and IBM Security Verify provide more comprehensive cross-platform governance with stronger automation and reporting capabilities. The integration investment is higher, but the governance coverage is more complete.
Non-human identities — service accounts, API keys, machine identities — are the frontier challenge for IGA in 2026. These identities often have significant access, are frequently neglected in governance processes, and represent an attractive target for attackers. Extending your IGA programme to include machine identity governance is increasingly a compliance requirement as well as a security necessity.
*For identity governance implementation and access management consultancy, contact Lara IT Solutions on 0330 043 1930.*