8 Identity and Access Management Risks You Need to Know

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Cyberattacks are no longer rare – they’re relentless. And without a strong identity and Access Management (IAM) risk strategy, your organization could be one weak password away from a major breach. 

The average cost of a data breach now stands at $4.45 million, and it’s only climbing. Yet many businesses still overlook the most common access-related vulnerabilities until it’s too late. 

In this guide, we’ll walk you through the top IAM risks that leave your systems exposed and share practical tips to tighten your defenses before attackers strike.

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TL;DR 

• IAM is more than access control – it's a critical security framework that verifies identities, manages permissions, and enforces compliance through role-based access, monitoring, and automation.
  
• Top IAM risks include insider threats, weak passwords, lack of visibility, unauthorized access, misconfigurations, and poor access control policies—many of which are exacerbated by remote work and multi-cloud environments.
  
• CloudEagle addresses these vulnerabilities with features like automated provisioning/de-provisioning, role-based access controls (RBAC), real-time monitoring, and Shadow IT detection to eliminate manual errors and blind spots.
  
• Proactive measures such as enforcing MFA, automating access reviews, and implementing Zero Trust principles significantly reduce the risk of data breaches and compliance violations.
  
• A unified IAM solution like CloudEagle helps streamline security across SaaS apps, ensures consistent governance, and protects against costly breaches by reducing human error and ensuring least-privilege access.

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What is Identity and Access Management (IAM)?

Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a framework of policies, technologies, and processes that ensures the right individuals and devices have appropriate access to an organization’s resources. It plays a central role in safeguarding sensitive data, applications, and systems by verifying user identities and managing permissions effectively.

IAM enables organizations to:

• Authenticate users before granting access.
• Authorize specific permissions based on roles and responsibilities.
• Monitor and track user activities to detect and prevent unauthorized access.

By streamlining identity management, IAM helps businesses maintain security while improving user experience, supporting compliance, and enabling scalability.

Core Objectives of IAM

1. Verify Identities:
   Authenticate users and devices to confirm they are who they claim to be using passwords, biometrics, or multi-factor authentication (MFA).

2. Control Access Levels:
   Assign role-based permissions to ensure employees and contractors only access the data and applications required for their tasks.

3. Monitor User Activity:
   Track login events, access attempts, and privilege escalations to detect suspicious behavior and enforce accountability.

4. Automate Provisioning and Deprovisioning:
   Simplify user onboarding and offboarding processes, ensuring access is granted or revoked promptly to reduce vulnerabilities.

5. Enforce Compliance:
   Help organizations comply with industry regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, and SOX by maintaining secure and auditable access records.

Implementing a strong IAM system not only prevents cyber threats but also improves operational efficiency and business agility a must in today’s hybrid and cloud-first environments.

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‍The 8 most common Identity and Access Management risks

Explore the essential aspects of the IAM framework by uncovering the top 8 identity and access management risks that organizations commonly encounter.

1. Insider threats and misuse of privileged access

The most common identity and access management risks include mistakes made by existing employees, known as insider threats.

For example, an unhappy employee might abuse privileged access to manipulate financial records or steal intellectual property. Similarly, a contractor with access to sensitive systems could intentionally leak confidential information to a competitor for personal gain.

These threats can be intentional or unintentional and may arise for various reasons, including disgruntlement, financial incentives, negligence, or ignorance.

This table will help you understand the different types of insider threats.

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These insider threats create major hurdles for IAM systems, bringing about a range of negative impacts.

• Firstly, they can lead to unauthorized access to sensitive data and systems, resulting in serious consequences like data breaches, theft of intellectual property, or financial losses.
• Secondly, these threats can disrupt business operations and critical services, causing downtime, damaging the organization's reputation, and eroding customer trust.
• Thirdly, they may result in compliance violations with regulatory requirements, leading to legal penalties, fines, and further harm to the organization's reputation.

2. Weak password and authentication practices

Many of us use weak passwords like "123456," "admin," and "password," making it easy for hackers to access our privileged accounts. Weak passwords present significant risks as they are susceptible to various cyber attacks, such as brute-force and phishing attempts.

Additionally, sharing and reusing credentials heighten the risk of compromise across multiple accounts. Surprisingly, despite the danger, 45% of remote users use the same password for both work and personal accounts.

Use strong passwords and multi-factor authentication (MFA) to keep things safe. MFA adds extra layers of security, making it harder for hackers to attack or steal identities. It also helps organizations follow security rules and makes users more responsible.

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3. Lack of visibility into user access data

Organizations face big problems when they can't see who's accessing what. Not being able to see everything also means it's harder to catch someone sneaking in where they shouldn't be or spotting old accounts that shouldn't still have access.

For example, if employees have access to data they don't need anymore and no one's checking, it's easier for that data to end up where it shouldn't.

Also, undetected dormant accounts pose risks, including security breaches, data loss, compliance violations, insider threats, operational disruptions, reputation damage, and ineffective user lifecycle management.

To mitigate these risks, organizations should implement robust access controls, monitor account activity, enforce strong authentication, conduct regular audits, and provide employee training on security best practices.

Tracking and managing user access can be challenging without sufficient monitoring and auditing mechanisms. With 62% of security teams facing visibility limitations, tracking access becomes more difficult.

As organizations transform digitally and embrace cloud technologies, monitoring data access becomes more complex. IT teams struggle to track and manage user access effectively without comprehensive visibility into the entire technology stack and its access mechanisms.

So, organizations must set up secure systems to watch who's accessing what and ensure they catch any problems before they become big.

4. Unauthorized access

Improper user deprovisioning can lead to serious security risks, including unauthorized access by ex-employees who still retain user account privileges. Unauthorized access can lead to severe consequences for organizations, including data breaches, intellectual property theft, disruption of operations, and compromised trust.

Organizations can employ various techniques to prevent unauthorized access, including strong authentication, access control, and encryption, and provide employee training on these techniques and regular security updates.

If you want to implement advanced monitoring and prevention mechanisms to safeguard your organization, you can opt for CloudEagle. With real-time monitoring, robust authentication, and easy SSO and HR systems integration, CloudEagle ensures accuracy and efficiency across the identity and access lifecycle.

With CloudEagle, requesting access to SaaS apps and getting approval happens fast because it's automated. This also means when someone leaves the company, access can be taken away quickly, without mistakes that often happen when doing it manually.

CloudEagle makes managing all your SaaS apps simple. It helps automate employee onboarding by suggesting the apps they need. When they leave, it ensures their access is promptly removed, keeping your system secure. Everything can be done with just a click, saving time and effort.

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Also, hackers employ techniques such as phishing, brute force attacks, or exploiting software vulnerabilities to gain unauthorized access. Once inside, they can steal data, disrupt operations, or deploy malware. For example, exploiting outdated software vulnerabilities allows attackers to access a company's network infrastructure illegally.

Therefore, taking proactive measures will keep your systems safe and secure. With CloudEagle, you control your SaaS apps, ensuring smooth deployment and supervision. Its security features strengthen defenses, while automated processes save time.

5. Inadequate access controls

Access control weaknesses are problems in how organizations manage who can access their information. Issues like weak passwords or not monitoring who's accessing what can lead to unauthorized access to sensitive data.

Failure to set up proper access controls can allow unauthorized people to access important information or systems. For example, having data access that doesn't match their job roles raises the chance of accidental or purposeful data leaks.

Imagine a new employee having free access to financial records. This could lead to them accidentally sharing or using sensitive data for personal gain. To prevent this, you can set up different access controls.

To prevent this, it's important to have strong ways of checking who's who, like using multi-factor authentication and ensuring people only have access to what they need for their jobs. Regularly monitoring things helps catch problems early.

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This table will help you understand the various types of access controls and apply them to secure your organization's security.

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6. Misconfigurations

System or application confusion can accidentally expose sensitive data or create security risks. Nearly 23% of cloud security incidents stem from misconfigurations, while 27% of businesses have faced security breaches in their public cloud systems.

For instance, wrongly set up cloud storage could make data accessible to anyone online, resulting in breaches. Similarly, misconfigured firewall rules might permit unauthorized access to internal networks, jeopardizing the organization's security.

Review this table to grasp how various misconfigurations impact your organization's security.

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7. Risks of multi-cloud architecture

Using a multi-cloud setup has lots of benefits. It helps with disaster recovery, gives flexibility, avoids getting stuck with one provider, improves performance by using different locations, saves money, and lets organizations pick the best services from different providers.

But it's not all easy. Dealing with multiple clouds can be complicated and risky. Ensuring everyone has the right access and keeping data safe with encryption keys across different clouds needs careful planning. If not done right, there could be mistakes and security holes.

Plus, if there's a security problem in one cloud, it might spread to others if they're not kept separate. So, while using lots of clouds can be smart, it's important to focus on keeping things secure and well-managed to avoid problems.

Check this table to understand the increased risks of using multi-cloud environments.

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8. Weak IAM security policies

80% of cyberattacks utilize identity-based attack methods, according to CrowdStrike. Thus, organizations must establish clear and robust IAM security policies to govern user access and authentication practices.

Implementing strong password policies is vital for enhancing IAM security controls. Weak password policies can severely compromise your organization's security.

For instance, lacking strict rules for password complexity, employees might choose easily guessable passwords, inadvertently inviting attackers to exploit accounts through brute force or password-spraying attacks.

To address these risks, enforce robust password policies within your organization. You can enable the mentioned policies within your organization.

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Mitigating IAM Risks: Proactive Measures

To mitigate the IAM risks, you must:

1. Select an IAM Solution

Evaluate existing IAM tools, access management processes, encryption policies, and logging mechanisms to identify gaps and areas for improvement.

Choose a comprehensive IAM solution that supports:

• Automation for onboarding/offboarding
• RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) to define access levels based on roles
• MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication) for enhanced security
• Access reviews to validate permissions
• Encryption and logging capabilities for compliance

Popular IAM platforms include Azure Active Directory, AWS IAM, Okta, and CloudEagle for automated workflows and SaaS app management.

2. IAM Policies and Governance Frameworks

Implement data governance policies to manage data integrity, availability, and security.

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Define clear roles and automate permissions based on job responsibilities. 

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Zero Trust Model: Enforce a never-trust, always-verify approach to authenticate every access request—whether inside or outside the network.

CloudEagle streamlines RBAC management by automatically provisioning access based on predefined roles and enforcing Zero Trust principles through regular access reviews and monitoring.

3. Automate Role Assignment and Revocation

Define clear roles and responsibilities within the organization.

• Create policies for password rules, MFA, and RBAC.
• Utilize IAM tools to automate assignments and revocations based on user roles.
• Implement workflows to automatically remove excessive permissions as roles change.

CloudEagle’s automated de-provisioning eliminates orphaned accounts, ensuring seamless transitions during employee exits without manual errors.

4. Combat Shadow IT Risks

Shadow IT using unauthorized SaaS tools poses major IAM risks to compliance and security.

CloudEagle addresses Shadow IT risks by:

• Monitoring unauthorized SaaS usage across teams.
• Automatically detecting and categorizing unapproved tools.
• Offering centralized visibility into all SaaS applications to eliminate blind spots.

This ensures IT teams maintain full control over SaaS environments, minimizing vulnerabilities.

5. Automate Access Reviews

Set up automated access review processes to evaluate user permissions periodically.

• Generate audit reports to track unauthorized access attempts.
• Trigger alerts for anomalies to prevent insider threats.

CloudEagle simplifies periodic access reviews and provides real-time visibility into user activities to identify potential identity and access management, including security risks.

6. Enforce MFA & Strong Password Policies

• Enforce MFA requirements for sensitive systems using biometrics, OTP, and hardware tokens.
• Configure password policies for complexity, periodic resets, and automatic expiration.

CloudEagle’s password management and MFA authentication reduce IAM risks from weak credentials and unauthorized access attempts.

7. Continuous Monitoring and Logging

Enable continuous monitoring and logging of user activities to detect unusual behavior.

• Implement automated alerts for security incidents.
• Use CloudEagle’s real-time monitoring dashboards to detect suspicious activity and enforce compliance. 

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8. Privilege Audits and Just-in-Time Access

• Define and enforce RBAC policies with automated role assignments.
• Conduct regular privilege audits to maintain policy compliance.
• Implement Just-in-Time (JIT) access provisioning for temporary permissions that expire automatically. 

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CloudEagle reduces such identity and access management risks by granting temporary access based on immediate needs, ensuring minimal exposure.

9. IAM Governance and Compliance

Establish IAM governance frameworks aligned with regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, and SOX.

CloudEagle ensures compliance with industry standards through:

• Automated logging of user activities.
• Centralized access reviews for audits.
• Encryption policies to protect sensitive data. 

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10. Multi-Cloud IAM Management

Managing identities across multiple cloud platforms is complex.

CloudEagle simplifies multi-cloud IAM by:

• Unifying access controls across cloud services.
• Automating provisioning and de-provisioning.
• Enabling single sign-on (SSO) and integrating with HR systems for seamless workflows.

CloudEagle’s IAM tools and automated workflows address common IAM risks such as insider threats, Shadow IT, weak passwords, and multi-cloud vulnerabilities. Its features—like de-provisioning, access monitoring, and privilege audits—ensure compliance, minimize human errors, and reduce security gaps.

For a deeper dive into identity governance strategies, check out our related blog: “7 Identity and Access Management Best Practices.”

Hear from Joshua Peskay, a 3CPO (CIO, CISO, and CPO) at RoundTable Technology, as he talks about managing Shadow IT in the era of remote work and presents an ROI score for SaaS tools to assist businesses in optimizing their technology investments.

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Conclusion

When you proactively implement these identity and access management measures, you can strengthen your organization's IAM security frameworks, reduce the likelihood of security incidents, and safeguard sensitive data and systems from potential threats and vulnerabilities.

Protecting against identity and access management risks is essential for maintaining the integrity and security of digital assets within organizations. Numerous challenges exist in today's cybersecurity landscape, such as insider threats, weak authentication practices, and misconfigurations.

By prioritizing security and implementing different strategies to mitigate identity and access management risks, you can strengthen your organization’s defenses against cyber threats.

If you want to strengthen your organization's cybersecurity measures, it's wise to seek valuable insights and guidance from industry experts to build a solid plan.

Consider scheduling a meeting with CloudEagle to learn more about protecting your organization from security threats.

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