Identity Governance Is Hard—But It Has to Happen

It is no secret that Identity Governance & Administration (IGA) is critical when it comes to ensuring the right users have the right access for the right amount of time. It is at the center of everything you care about - security, productivity, compliance, and financial efficiency. 

And yet, IGA tools have long been seen as a bottleneck. According to IAM Leader’s Guide to Identity Governance and Administration, Gartner, August 2023:

“IGA is typically the most complex and costly IAM initiative, with many potential pitfalls, mainly driven by its integration and customization possibilities. Do not attempt to deploy IGA tools by yourself or with a limited team; expect long implementation times.”

The truth is: Identity Governance is harder than ever today. But that’s exactly why it matters more than ever.

The Problem: Identity Is a Mess

Traditional IGA hasn't been able to fulfill their promise due to the operational overhead during implementation and maintenance. They require heavy implementation effort, constant upkeep, and often rely on static roles, brittle workflows, and manual approvals—creating daily friction across IT, HR, and security teams.

A decade or two ago, most companies had a manageable number of apps and a clear HR-to-IT handoff. You onboarded new hires, gave them email and one or two SaaS app access, and maybe a few internal tools. Done.

Today?

• You have 10x more apps thanks to the cloud, SaaS and AI boom.
• You have 10x more identities—and a growing chunk of them aren’t even human (think bots, service accounts, AI agents) on top of employees, contractors and vendors.
• You have dynamic environments. Teams change roles, orgs reorg, acquisitions happen, and business units spin up overnight.

Meanwhile, you’re still doing access reviews in spreadsheets or with clunky legacy tools from 2009. You cannot 100x your team size to take care of operational tasks and recurring day-to-day maintenance. 

No wonder identity governance feels overwhelming. You are being asked to do more-with less- in a dynamic and high-stakes environment. 

Why It Still Needs to Happen

Despite the complexity, you can’t afford not to govern access. Here's why:

1. Identity is and continues to be the #1 Attack Vector
2. Unmanaged Access equals to Unseen Risk
3. Manual Processes Don’t Scale
4. Compliance Isn’t Optional

Lets take a closer look at each  of these.

 1. Identity is and continues to be the #1 Attack Vector

More than 70% of breaches involve a compromised identity (Verizon DBIR, 2024). Hackers no longer break in, they just log in, bypassing legacy defenses. Every excess entitlement, every orphaned account, every unused access credential is a risk waiting to be exploited.

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2. Unmanaged Access equals to Unseen Risk

If you don’t know who has access to what—and why—you’re flying blind. Lack of visibility leads to risky shadow IT apps, access sprawl, privilege creep, and audit failures. Most companies only realize they have a problem after something goes wrong. It might be too late then. 

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3. Manual Processes Don’t Scale

Access request tickets, ad-hoc approvals, static roles that someone built three years ago and no one remembers why, access review checklists. These must-have processes don’t scale efficiently in a world where your app landscape is changing rapidly and your users expect instant access. This leads to click fatigue and rubber-stamping approvals, in addition to team and user frustrations. 

4. Compliance Isn’t Optional

SOC 2, SOX, HIPAA, ISO, GDPR—pick your favorite acronym. Almost every regulation requires proof of access governance: who had access, who approved it, how long have they had the access, when was it last reviewed. If you can’t answer those questions confidently or quickly, you're not compliant and more likely to fail your audits.

So What’s the Way Forward?

We believe in a world where identity keeps up with your business. Identity governance doesn’t need to be so overwhelming or expensive, that your teams give up half-way through. The new generation of IGA platforms, powered by AI and automation, flips the old model on its head.

With modern tools, you can:

• Centralize visibility with a single unified platform and consumer-grade UX to comprehensively map out every identity, app and permission. 
• Analyze real-time access patterns and license usage for anomalies, violations and risks so you know what’s important and where to focus your efforts on. 
• Automate onboarding, offboarding, and role changes across your app stack
• Act with automated access reviews that surface changes, outliers and risks with AI-driven intelligence and remediate unapproved access quickly, driving down security risks and meeting compliance. 
• Model and refine access policies with the power of AI, based on real-world usage and org updates. 
• Continuously monitor and adapt as your environment evolves, by learning how your identities and apps behave with actual requests and usage.
  

It’s not just faster—it’s smarter. And it’s how you turn identity from a blocker into a business enabler and innovation accelerator.

With Lumos, Your Identity Governance Gets an Uplift

Yes, identity governance is hard. But doing nothing is worse. This is because:

• Ignoring it creates security gaps.
• Postponing it leads to chaos.
• Outsourcing it to email threads and IT tickets just kicks it down the road.

And more importantly, it delays your strategic initiatives, gets in the way of innovation and frustrates your admins and users. 

The good news? With Lumo's autonomous identity platform, identity governance can become automatic, adaptive, and a true strategic advantage. Take back control with a powerful combination of deep access visibility, intelligent automation, and real-time policy enforcement that adapts to your business. Empower your security and IT teams to become a force multiplier with the power of autonomy.

Ready to adopt modern identity governance? Book a demo with Lumos today and see how identity turns from a security and operational chore to a strong strategic advantage.