Why Access Reviews Are Broken And Nobody Wants to Admit It

Access reviews are everywhere. Quarterly cycles. Audit requirements. Approval workflows. Compliance dashboards. They’re treated as one of the most critical controls in Identity and Access Management (IAM). And yet breaches still happen. Permissions keep expanding. Admin access quietly accumulates. So it’s worth asking: Are access reviews actually improving security or just creating the appearance of it? The Control That Looks Good on Paper On paper, access reviews are simple and logical: Identify who has access Ask managers to validate it Remove what’s unnecessary Reduce risk It sounds like governance. But in practice, it often becomes something else entirely. A routine. A checkbox. A compliance exercise. What Really Happens During Access Reviews Let’s walk through a typical access review cycle. A manager receives a notification: “Please review access for your team.” They open a dashboard and see: Dozens (or hundreds) of users Multiple applications Technical permission names Little to