How Access Reviews Prevent Silent Privilege Creep
Nobody grants excessive access on purpose. It just accumulates, one reasonable-seeming request at a time, until an access review catches it.
Privilege creep is a familiar pattern in nearly every organization: an employee's access accumulates steadily over years as they change roles, join temporary projects, and get granted access for a task that never gets revoked afterward.
The reason this happens even in well-run organizations is structural. Granting access is typically fast, a single click tied to an immediate business need. Revoking it requires someone to notice the need has actually ended, which competes against more urgent daily priorities and usually loses.
Why it matters more than it seems: an employee with years of accumulated, mostly unused access is a meaningfully larger risk than one whose permissions match their current role exactly, because a single compromised account now exposes every system that access touches.
A practical review doesn't need to be exhaustive to be valuable. Focusing on the most sensitive systems first, and confirming quarterly that every person with access still genuinely needs it, catches most of the meaningful creep for a fraction of the effort a full audit would take.
Reviews that rely purely on someone remembering to do them tend to fade out after a cycle or two. Attaching the review to an existing recurring process keeps it from being the first thing skipped.