For better identity security: control entitlement entanglements

COMMENTARY: In cybersecurity, the most dangerous threats are not always external. Sometimes, they are created by existing business processes and non-trivial edge cases that are simply overlooked.

Sometimes these threats are buried deep within identity systems, access policies, and entitlement frameworks. They are the result of entitlement combinations that create toxic identity security combinations.

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When multiple entitlements, privileges, or permissions intersect – each harmless in isolation – they can form a path for abuse, conflict, or compromise. They often create paths to privileged access or worse, least-privilege combinations that inappropriately expose information to improper business roles. These combinations do not just violate the principle of separation of duties; they undermine the very foundation of trust in digital identities.

For starters, every organization has policies for granting access: who can read, write, approve, or administer. Individually, these controls appear rational and have appropriate business justifications.

However, when a single identity accumulates privileges across these boundaries because of faults in joiner, mover, and leaver processes, or employees assume multiple roles, various audits can devolve into a state of conflict and create toxic access entitlements. Need proof? Consider these common use cases:

Each of these overlaps represents a business and technical conflict or an entanglement of duties that blurs accountability and invites accidental or intentional exploitation and chaos for auditing teams.

From a security perspective, it’s how privilege escalation begins. It’s not through a zero-day or advanced malware, but through well-intentioned access decisions that ignore context or business roles.

Toxic combinations are the silent enablers of insider threats, compliance violations, and accidental breaches through overlapping and potentially conflicting entitlements. They convert convenience for a user into a vulnerability nested in identity security.

These toxic combinations arise from a disconnect between business logic and technical enforcement based on the tools we use for identity access management and governance.

Business leaders tend to think in terms of roles and responsibilities and the processes needed for approvals, workflows, and outcomes. Technical teams think in terms of identities, accounts, entitlements, groups, permissions, rights and privileges within technology in order to enable business requirements.

When the interpretation creates entanglements, conflicts, and overlap, the problem can create an unintentional risk surface even though every best practice was technically followed correctly.

For all operational teams, the risk occurs when these two worlds collide without an appropriate business to technology translation. A business unit might request access for “project efficiency,” but IT fulfills it by assigning direct entitlements.

These are often copied from a colleague, inherited from a template, or accumulated over years in violation of best practices. Each new project, merger, role change, responsibility, organizational change, or policy change adds another layer of access without determining if a potential conflict occurs.

Over time, these entitlements become out-of-sync with business requirements and morph into something far more dangerous. As a simple analogy, it’s like pouring multiple chemicals into the same container without checking their reactivity. Each one has a purpose, but together, they might produce toxic results.

Technology alone will not cure these toxic combinations. We need better identity governance, security, and detection and improved threat response. When these disciplines are properly enforced, an organization’s visibility improves into:

The foundation for this model should always start with the principle of least privilege. That’s granting the minimum level of access required to perform a task. But it takes more than least privilege. Organizations must also implement Segregation-of-Duties (SoD) controls that explicitly prevent conflicting entitlements from coexisting for any one identity and its associated accounts. For example: the same user should never have access to both “create vendor” and “approve vendor payments” in an ERP system.

In today’s hybrid infrastructures spanning cloud, SaaS, and legacy systems, the line between technical and business entitlements has blurred. A role in Salesforce might have more power over customer data than a privileged account in Active Directory. A service account in AWS might indirectly control critical production workloads through IAM roles or API tokens.

Context-aware identity security platforms can correlate these entitlements across systems, revealing how permissions interact and where they overlap dangerously. Essentially that path to privileged access has been discussed here. It’s where AI and advanced analytics are becoming vital for detecting patterns of privilege misuse, lateral movement potential, and privilege escalation risks long before they become attack vectors.

While technology can identify toxic combinations, only humans can prevent their creation. CISOs and identity architects must promote a culture of access accountability. Teams need to justify every access request in business terms, and review it periodically, and revok them when no longer needed.

We also need better education. Employees must understand that excessive access is not a requirement, it’s a liability and conflicting entitlements are just as dangerous.

In cybersecurity, not all toxicity comes from malicious intent. Sometimes, it’s born from trust, convenience, and the absence of oversight. Toxic combinations are the unintended consequences of a world moving too fast to question why access gets granted and how attackers can potentially abuse it.

The path to remediation begins with visibility, continues through governance, and matures into identity security. By continuously mapping, monitoring, and managing entitlements, organizations can neutralize toxic combinations before they trigger a breach or an audit nightmare.

Morey J. Haber, chief security advisor, lead identity and technical evangelist, BeyondTrust

SC Media Perspectives columns are written by a trusted community of SC Media cybersecurity subject matter experts. Each contribution has a goal of bringing a unique voice to important cybersecurity topics. Content strives to be of the highest quality, objective and non-commercial.