User Access Reviews

Conducting User Access Reviews

Conducting User Access Reviews

Aakash Bhardwaj

Jun 12, 2025

Jun 12, 2025

Threats in cybersecurity

Threats in cybersecurity are constantly changing, and so must we when defending against those threats. Firewalls, encryption, and intrusion detection blocks are solid components of a robust security posture, but there's one major, often overlooked layer that can greatly reduce risk from both the inside and out: User Access Review (UARs).

When we talk about user access review, it's probably safe to say you know what you're doing – it's not about "compliance," although that's a big benefit. User access review means preventing needless loss of digital assets, ensuring the integrity of data, and guarding against unauthorized access that can lead to disastrous breaches. In an increasingly connected business world where one compromised account can undo years of work, understanding user access reviews is more than a smart move – it’s critical!

This guide will get into the "why" and "how" of periodic user access reviews to equip you with the knowledge and capabilities to improve your organization's security and manage your access governance. We'll include some basic frameworks for effective user access review processes, the most effective cadence for conducting reviews, and we'll talk about how new, purpose-fitted solutions like ReShield streamline this important security component.

User Access Reviews can be the Source of Your Worst Vulnerabilities

User Access Reviews can be the Source of Your Worst Vulnerabilities

Isn't a castle with towering, unscalable walls a dream? How about the backdoor? What if your newly purchased castle had a backdoor to the security solution, and the previous owner decided to leave out a critical lock? Too often, institutions, organizations, and enterprises are operating with these types of vulnerabilities.

Consider these examples:

  • Employee Turnover: When an employee leaves, is their access to every system immediately deprovisioned? In almost all circumstances, the answer is no. Access remains to some degree, resulting in ghost accounts, where malicious actors or disgruntled former employees can easily exploit access.

  • Role Changes: An employee changes from a sales role to marketing. Is access to sensitive sales data automatically removed and new, appropriate access provided? In most instances, when role changes happen, and given the manual-focused and arbitrary processes in place, access can be accumulated and privileges aren't removed when not necessary or don't support the current role.

  • Privilege Creep: For any number of reasons (specific projects, initiatives, etc.), employees procure new access; over time, permissions can pile up, resulting in potentially more access than a person's current role necessitates. This privilege creep feeds a security risk.

  • Shadow IT: Employees can use their own applications, cloud services, or even both to perform work-related tasks, which opens unmanaged access points that are outside your control and not in alignment with your security and privacy strategy and processes.

  • Insider Threats: Whether malicious or accidental, insiders are insiders regardless of their motives or intentions. Otherwise legitimate access is just as risky if the right levels of access are not actively scrutinized, managed, or reviewed.

All of these scenarios lead to a true problem: absent rigorous and periodic user access reviews, you passively increase your attack surface over time. As you expand your attack surface, you make it easier for the threat landscape to violate your organization. This isn't an absolute judgment, but solely a concern for failure, breaches, compliance violations, or reputational impacts that come from adding ghost accounts, user provisioned access to sensitive capabilities, unnecessary privilege escalations, and managing risk for your organization.

Isn't a castle with towering, unscalable walls a dream? How about the backdoor? What if your newly purchased castle had a backdoor to the security solution, and the previous owner decided to leave out a critical lock? Too often, institutions, organizations, and enterprises are operating with these types of vulnerabilities.

Consider these examples:

  • Employee Turnover: When an employee leaves, is their access to every system immediately deprovisioned? In almost all circumstances, the answer is no. Access remains to some degree, resulting in ghost accounts, where malicious actors or disgruntled former employees can easily exploit access.

  • Role Changes: An employee changes from a sales role to marketing. Is access to sensitive sales data automatically removed and new, appropriate access provided? In most instances, when role changes happen, and given the manual-focused and arbitrary processes in place, access can be accumulated and privileges aren't removed when not necessary or don't support the current role.

  • Privilege Creep: For any number of reasons (specific projects, initiatives, etc.), employees procure new access; over time, permissions can pile up, resulting in potentially more access than a person's current role necessitates. This privilege creep feeds a security risk.

  • Shadow IT: Employees can use their own applications, cloud services, or even both to perform work-related tasks, which opens unmanaged access points that are outside your control and not in alignment with your security and privacy strategy and processes.

  • Insider Threats: Whether malicious or accidental, insiders are insiders regardless of their motives or intentions. Otherwise legitimate access is just as risky if the right levels of access are not actively scrutinized, managed, or reviewed.

All of these scenarios lead to a true problem: absent rigorous and periodic user access reviews, you passively increase your attack surface over time. As you expand your attack surface, you make it easier for the threat landscape to violate your organization. This isn't an absolute judgment, but solely a concern for failure, breaches, compliance violations, or reputational impacts that come from adding ghost accounts, user provisioned access to sensitive capabilities, unnecessary privilege escalations, and managing risk for your organization.

Benefits of Formal User Access Reviews

Benefits of Formal User Access Reviews

While regulatory compliance (GDPR, HIPAA, SOX, NIST, ISO 27001, etc.) is often the most visible driving force behind an organization undertaking formal UARs, the benefits serve multiple purposes, including:

1. Improved Security Posture:

  • Limited attack surface: When you deprovision dormant accounts, remove unnecessary privileges, and orphaned access, you reduce the potential points of entry attackers can use.

  • Mitigating Insider Threats: Regular reviews allow remediation of excessive access that can be abused by employees, whether accidental or forced by financial pressures or personal circumstances.

  • Better Data Confidentiality and Integrity: Only allowing authorized personnel access to sensitive data protects the confidentiality of the data and operations, preventing unauthorized changes.

2. Better Operational Efficiency:

  • Easier Access Management: A well-defined UAR process allows cleaner and more organized access controls and will make it easier to manage users' permissions.

  • Faster Onboarding/Offboarding: If you have clear access requirements for each role, employees entering or leaving the organization will be onboarded/offboarded faster and with less risk.

  • Less Overhead in IT: By finding unnecessary accounts and privileges and subsequently removing them, we also remove needless administrative work for IT Teams.

3. Better Compliance and Audit Readiness:

  • Provide Control Proof: We have a documented record that we are serious about access governance and control as part of our overall security practices to support successful audits.

  • Avoid Fines: Not protecting data from hackers was costly, and if your organization is non-compliant with new data protection regulations, there will be heavy fines waiting on your doorstep. The UAR will help you meet regulatory obligations.

  • Better Public Image: A strong security posture based on good access governance will increase your reputation and standing.

4. Better Risk Management:

  • Identifying Risky Access: UAR affords the ability to identify accounts with risky access that may include highly sensitive data or excessive privileges. Take aim and action on risks related to access with accuracy and ease.

  • Threats on the Horizon: By checking access quarterly, you can help notice anomalies or suspicious activity associated with access that may be impending.

While regulatory compliance (GDPR, HIPAA, SOX, NIST, ISO 27001, etc.) is often the most visible driving force behind an organization undertaking formal UARs, the benefits serve multiple purposes, including:

1. Improved Security Posture:

  • Limited attack surface: When you deprovision dormant accounts, remove unnecessary privileges, and orphaned access, you reduce the potential points of entry attackers can use.

  • Mitigating Insider Threats: Regular reviews allow remediation of excessive access that can be abused by employees, whether accidental or forced by financial pressures or personal circumstances.

  • Better Data Confidentiality and Integrity: Only allowing authorized personnel access to sensitive data protects the confidentiality of the data and operations, preventing unauthorized changes.

2. Better Operational Efficiency:

  • Easier Access Management: A well-defined UAR process allows cleaner and more organized access controls and will make it easier to manage users' permissions.

  • Faster Onboarding/Offboarding: If you have clear access requirements for each role, employees entering or leaving the organization will be onboarded/offboarded faster and with less risk.

  • Less Overhead in IT: By finding unnecessary accounts and privileges and subsequently removing them, we also remove needless administrative work for IT Teams.

3. Better Compliance and Audit Readiness:

  • Provide Control Proof: We have a documented record that we are serious about access governance and control as part of our overall security practices to support successful audits.

  • Avoid Fines: Not protecting data from hackers was costly, and if your organization is non-compliant with new data protection regulations, there will be heavy fines waiting on your doorstep. The UAR will help you meet regulatory obligations.

  • Better Public Image: A strong security posture based on good access governance will increase your reputation and standing.

4. Better Risk Management:

  • Identifying Risky Access: UAR affords the ability to identify accounts with risky access that may include highly sensitive data or excessive privileges. Take aim and action on risks related to access with accuracy and ease.

  • Threats on the Horizon: By checking access quarterly, you can help notice anomalies or suspicious activity associated with access that may be impending.

Working through the User Access Review process

Working through the User Access Review process

A periodic user access review (UAR) that is successful is not a "one-and-done" process. The process of a periodic user access review is continuous and cyclical, and it will certainly fail without appropriate planning and continuous improvement.

With that said, here is a simple overview of the various components:

Step One: Define Scope and Objectives

  • What will you be reviewing?

    • What systems, applications, and data repositories will be included in the review? Start with the most important systems with the most sensitive data, and work your way outwards.

  • Who will be doing it?

    • Establish ownership for all components of the review process – system owner, application owner, data owner, security teams, etc.

  • What are your objectives?

    • Are you trying to achieve compliance, reduce risk exposure, become more efficient, or a combination of both? Define your objectives in measurable terms.

Step Two: Identify Users and Their Access

  • Inventory all users:

    • This means all of them – employees, contractors, vendors, service accounts, etc.

  • Describe user access:

    • Document for every user, what systems, applications, and data they can access, and what level of privilege (e.g., read, write, administer, etc.). Each user will require different access to different systems, applications, and data. This can be a massive undertaking, and in parallel, may be particularly difficult in large, heterogeneous environments.

Step Three: Define Access Baselines and Policies

  • Role-Based Access Control (RBAC):

    • Keep it simple and establish standards for role classification within your organization – what access is appropriate for which role. The various roles will provide your access baseline.

  • Least Privilege Principle:

    • Access should be granted based on only the minimum required privileges to allow users to fulfill their job functions.

  • Segregation of Duties (SoD):

    • Identify conflicting interests – do not allow one person to be in control of an entire critical process.

Step Four: Conduct the Review

  • Certification Campaign:

    • This is the key component of the review. System owners or managers must review and certify access rights for those people that are their direct reports or users of their system.

  • Review Questions:

    • Be specific about what you want reviewers to identify. The reviewers should be addressing questions like:

      • Does this user still require that access for their current role?

      • Does that access meet the principle of least privilege?

      • Are there any outliers or suspicious access patterns?

      • Is this access compliant with established RBAC?

  • Documentation:

    • Maintain a readily retrievable audit record of who certified access, what was certified, when, and what was the outcome.

Step Five: Remediate and Re-mediate (The Important Step!)

  • Action Unauthorized Access:

    • This one is tricky. Unwarranted, excessive, or unauthorized access must be removed.

  • Automated or Manual Remediation:

    • Either way, depending on your capability, this may be either a manual or ideally (more to come with ReShield...) a fully automated process.

  • Approval Workflows:

    • Where possible, for sensitive access types, allow for approval workflows when making access changes.

Step Six: Monitor and Report

  • Continuous Monitoring:

    • Develop your access management tools and processes to allow continuous monitoring of user access and generally any user-related process risk that is either visible or detectable in-between formal reviews.

  • Reporting:

    • Regularly report on users' access status, review outcomes, and remedial actions taken – management and audit applicable visitors will find this information valuable.

A periodic user access review (UAR) that is successful is not a "one-and-done" process. The process of a periodic user access review is continuous and cyclical, and it will certainly fail without appropriate planning and continuous improvement.

With that said, here is a simple overview of the various components:

Step One: Define Scope and Objectives

  • What will you be reviewing?

    • What systems, applications, and data repositories will be included in the review? Start with the most important systems with the most sensitive data, and work your way outwards.

  • Who will be doing it?

    • Establish ownership for all components of the review process – system owner, application owner, data owner, security teams, etc.

  • What are your objectives?

    • Are you trying to achieve compliance, reduce risk exposure, become more efficient, or a combination of both? Define your objectives in measurable terms.

Step Two: Identify Users and Their Access

  • Inventory all users:

    • This means all of them – employees, contractors, vendors, service accounts, etc.

  • Describe user access:

    • Document for every user, what systems, applications, and data they can access, and what level of privilege (e.g., read, write, administer, etc.). Each user will require different access to different systems, applications, and data. This can be a massive undertaking, and in parallel, may be particularly difficult in large, heterogeneous environments.

Step Three: Define Access Baselines and Policies

  • Role-Based Access Control (RBAC):

    • Keep it simple and establish standards for role classification within your organization – what access is appropriate for which role. The various roles will provide your access baseline.

  • Least Privilege Principle:

    • Access should be granted based on only the minimum required privileges to allow users to fulfill their job functions.

  • Segregation of Duties (SoD):

    • Identify conflicting interests – do not allow one person to be in control of an entire critical process.

Step Four: Conduct the Review

  • Certification Campaign:

    • This is the key component of the review. System owners or managers must review and certify access rights for those people that are their direct reports or users of their system.

  • Review Questions:

    • Be specific about what you want reviewers to identify. The reviewers should be addressing questions like:

      • Does this user still require that access for their current role?

      • Does that access meet the principle of least privilege?

      • Are there any outliers or suspicious access patterns?

      • Is this access compliant with established RBAC?

  • Documentation:

    • Maintain a readily retrievable audit record of who certified access, what was certified, when, and what was the outcome.

Step Five: Remediate and Re-mediate (The Important Step!)

  • Action Unauthorized Access:

    • This one is tricky. Unwarranted, excessive, or unauthorized access must be removed.

  • Automated or Manual Remediation:

    • Either way, depending on your capability, this may be either a manual or ideally (more to come with ReShield...) a fully automated process.

  • Approval Workflows:

    • Where possible, for sensitive access types, allow for approval workflows when making access changes.

Step Six: Monitor and Report

  • Continuous Monitoring:

    • Develop your access management tools and processes to allow continuous monitoring of user access and generally any user-related process risk that is either visible or detectable in-between formal reviews.

  • Reporting:

    • Regularly report on users' access status, review outcomes, and remedial actions taken – management and audit applicable visitors will find this information valuable.

ReShield: Intelligently Automate your User Access Reviews

ReShield: Intelligently Automate your User Access Reviews




ReShield recognizes the complexities and challenges involved in performing periodic user access reviews. That's why we developed a solution to move past the overwhelming manual process and approach access reviews intelligently, efficiently, and securely.

Manual access reviews can quickly escalate into an enormous chore. Unfortunately, this often leads reviewers to the "Select All -> Approve All" option. This isn't just about cutting corners; it's a significant security risk to your organization because you lose control over what access might have been missed due to sheer volume. ReShield implements methods to change this.

How ReShield Drastically Changes User Access Reviews:

  • Focus on the Right Issues: Anomalies, Risks, and Outliers: Instead of reviewers sifting through endless spreadsheets, ReShield provides recommendations specifically highlighting anomalous, risky, and outlier access that needs attention. This enables reviewers to immediately focus on potential vulnerabilities without having to sift through numerous pages of an access list.

  • Automated Insights at the Decision Point: ReShield provides automated insights directly at the decision point for reviewers. This helps them understand why specific access could be risky. These insights make reviews faster and more accurate, allowing you to make informed decisions.

  • One-Click Remediation: ReShield enables a swift and decisive response for reviewers who need to remediate access that shouldn't be allowed. If you decide that an access needs to go, ReShield simplifies the next steps by providing remediation actions, such as removing access, with a single click. This significantly saves time and effort typically expected from reviewers, leading to an immediate reduction in your attack surface.

  • Human-in-the-Loop for Sensitive Decisions: Some decisions absolutely require human judgment. ReShield helps the reviewer consider sensitive access decisions before automated action. You keep full control and the final endorsement to make critical security decisions based on human intelligence, should it be required.

  • Automated Cadence for Timely Reviews: ReShield automates the review process, meaning you will not miss a single deadline. The ReShield system automatically launches review campaigns based on your policies and work plan, allocating reviewers, tracking completion, and documenting key milestones. Timely, consistent reviews will be a foregone conclusion.

  • Automated Removal on Rejection: When access is rejected or determined during a review as not needed, ReShield manages the automated removal of that access in all connected systems. Say goodbye to uncertainties, delays, and inefficiencies in the manual deprovisioning process.

  • Seamless Remediation Workflows: ReShield can initiate remediation workflows when a review requires complex cleanups. ReShield provides recommendations on the steps required and can even enable workflows to start the cleanup quickly. All actions will be tracked for future audit purposes with clear documentation.

  • Extensive Customizations for Unique Workflows: Organizations are all unique, and ReShield provides substantial customization to match your organization's cadence for reviews, approval hierarchy, notification preferences, remediation steps, and more.

  • Complete Audit Trail and Reporting: ReShield automatically generates a complete audit trail of all review activities and decisions, making your life easier next time you have to report for compliance.

Periodic User Access Reviews are no longer simply an exercise in compliance; they are a unique element of a robust cybersecurity strategy. Organizations that continuously assess and verify user access can reduce their cyber attack surface, mitigate insider threats, and remain compliant.

The burdens of manual user access reviews do exist. However, using technology like ReShield means you can fundamentally change the way this critical security function is executed. By smartly automating reviews, providing actionable insights, and ensuring humans participate in sensitive decisions, ReShield gives you the ability to move from a reactive security posture to a proactive, intelligent access governance capability.

Don't let ungoverned access in your organization be your "Achilles' heel." Recognize the power of intelligent automation and take a step forward to proactively govern user access, leveraging periodic User Access Reviews as a strategic advantage in your ongoing competition against cyber threats.

Are you ready to modernize your user access review processes? Discover how ReShield can take the pain out of access governance by intelligently automating it, making you more secure, and simplifying your compliance requirements.




ReShield recognizes the complexities and challenges involved in performing periodic user access reviews. That's why we developed a solution to move past the overwhelming manual process and approach access reviews intelligently, efficiently, and securely.

Manual access reviews can quickly escalate into an enormous chore. Unfortunately, this often leads reviewers to the "Select All -> Approve All" option. This isn't just about cutting corners; it's a significant security risk to your organization because you lose control over what access might have been missed due to sheer volume. ReShield implements methods to change this.

How ReShield Drastically Changes User Access Reviews:

  • Focus on the Right Issues: Anomalies, Risks, and Outliers: Instead of reviewers sifting through endless spreadsheets, ReShield provides recommendations specifically highlighting anomalous, risky, and outlier access that needs attention. This enables reviewers to immediately focus on potential vulnerabilities without having to sift through numerous pages of an access list.

  • Automated Insights at the Decision Point: ReShield provides automated insights directly at the decision point for reviewers. This helps them understand why specific access could be risky. These insights make reviews faster and more accurate, allowing you to make informed decisions.

  • One-Click Remediation: ReShield enables a swift and decisive response for reviewers who need to remediate access that shouldn't be allowed. If you decide that an access needs to go, ReShield simplifies the next steps by providing remediation actions, such as removing access, with a single click. This significantly saves time and effort typically expected from reviewers, leading to an immediate reduction in your attack surface.

  • Human-in-the-Loop for Sensitive Decisions: Some decisions absolutely require human judgment. ReShield helps the reviewer consider sensitive access decisions before automated action. You keep full control and the final endorsement to make critical security decisions based on human intelligence, should it be required.

  • Automated Cadence for Timely Reviews: ReShield automates the review process, meaning you will not miss a single deadline. The ReShield system automatically launches review campaigns based on your policies and work plan, allocating reviewers, tracking completion, and documenting key milestones. Timely, consistent reviews will be a foregone conclusion.

  • Automated Removal on Rejection: When access is rejected or determined during a review as not needed, ReShield manages the automated removal of that access in all connected systems. Say goodbye to uncertainties, delays, and inefficiencies in the manual deprovisioning process.

  • Seamless Remediation Workflows: ReShield can initiate remediation workflows when a review requires complex cleanups. ReShield provides recommendations on the steps required and can even enable workflows to start the cleanup quickly. All actions will be tracked for future audit purposes with clear documentation.

  • Extensive Customizations for Unique Workflows: Organizations are all unique, and ReShield provides substantial customization to match your organization's cadence for reviews, approval hierarchy, notification preferences, remediation steps, and more.

  • Complete Audit Trail and Reporting: ReShield automatically generates a complete audit trail of all review activities and decisions, making your life easier next time you have to report for compliance.

Periodic User Access Reviews are no longer simply an exercise in compliance; they are a unique element of a robust cybersecurity strategy. Organizations that continuously assess and verify user access can reduce their cyber attack surface, mitigate insider threats, and remain compliant.

The burdens of manual user access reviews do exist. However, using technology like ReShield means you can fundamentally change the way this critical security function is executed. By smartly automating reviews, providing actionable insights, and ensuring humans participate in sensitive decisions, ReShield gives you the ability to move from a reactive security posture to a proactive, intelligent access governance capability.

Don't let ungoverned access in your organization be your "Achilles' heel." Recognize the power of intelligent automation and take a step forward to proactively govern user access, leveraging periodic User Access Reviews as a strategic advantage in your ongoing competition against cyber threats.

Are you ready to modernize your user access review processes? Discover how ReShield can take the pain out of access governance by intelligently automating it, making you more secure, and simplifying your compliance requirements.