Access Reviews: The Recurring Gap We See Across the Region
Organisations across the region are investing heavily in perimeter defences, monitoring tools and incident response planning.
Fewer are asking a simple question regularly: who still has access to what, and why.
Across our assessments this quarter, inconsistent access reviews stand out as one of the most common and most fixable gaps we observe.
This article explains what the finding typically looks like, why it matters, and what a practical remediation path involves.
Observation
In a significant proportion of the organisations we assess, access reviews happen irregularly, or only in response to an audit requirement, rather than as a scheduled operational routine.
Employees who change roles, contractors whose engagements end, and former staff often retain system permissions long after they are needed.
This pattern appears across sectors and organisation sizes. It rarely results from a single decision. It typically reflects a process that was never formally scheduled, owned or reviewed.
Risk
Retained access that is no longer required increases the number of accounts that could reach sensitive systems or data, whether through error, misuse, or compromise.
The risk grows with time: the longer an unreviewed account remains active, the harder it becomes to reconstruct why it was granted, who approved it and whether it is still appropriate.
This does not mean every organisation with an inconsistent review cycle has experienced a security incident as a result.
It means the exposure exists and tends to accumulate quietly until a review, audit, or incident brings it to light.
Evidence
This pattern comes from anonymised observations across multiple client assessments conducted during the current assessment period.
Findings referenced here reflect the systems and access controls reviewed at the time of each assessment.
Individual organisations may vary depending on their existing tools, team structure, and prior review history.
Recommendation
A structured access review cycle addresses this gap without requiring a large upfront investment. We typically recommend the following sequence.
- Immediate action: Within 30 days, the organisation’s IT or security lead should complete a full access audit for systems handling sensitive or regulated data, identifying any accounts tied to former employees, expired contractors or roles that no longer require the access originally granted.
- Near-term action: Within the following quarter, the organisation should establish a recurring review cycle, typically quarterly for standard systems and monthly for highly sensitive environments, with a named owner accountable for completing each cycle on schedule.
- Strategic action: Over the following two quarters, the organisation should introduce automated alerts for role changes and departures, reducing reliance on manual tracking and closing the gap between a change in employment status and a change in system access.
Each action depends on the organisation’s existing identity and access management tooling.
Where that tooling is limited, the near-term action may need to begin with a manual process before automation becomes practical.
A structured review cycle helps reduce this exposure. It does not eliminate all risk, and its effectiveness depends on consistent execution over time.
What this means for your organisation
If access reviews at your organisation happen only around audit season, or if nobody can confidently say who currently has access to your most sensitive systems, this finding likely applies.
The good news is that this is one of the more straightforward gaps to close, and organisations that establish a regular review cycle typically see the benefit within a single quarter.
If you would like a clearer, evidence-based view of your organisation’s current access posture, our team can walk you through what a focused assessment involves.
