Summer Holidays Expose Hidden Access Rights Problem in Corporate IT Systems
Published on 08/15/2026 at 18:44 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
When employees head off on annual leave, they rarely think about what happens to their digital permissions. But for IT security teams, the holiday season has become a season of risk — as temporary handover arrangements often linger long after they should have been revoked.
Industry analyses dated 14 August 2026 show that many organisations are struggling with a phenomenon known as "permission drift." It emerges when substitution rules are put in place without a clear end date, leaving security gaps that conventional review processes frequently fail to close in time.
The Offboarding Gap: When Departing Staff Keep Their Keys
A recurring weakness in identity and access management is the practice of granting substitute access rights without a fixed expiration. Employees returning from vacation routinely discover that their colleagues still hold elevated permissions that no longer match their actual job requirements.
Established recertification procedures are often ineffective, according to the analyses. Reviews happen either too infrequently or too superficially, allowing the gradual accumulation of unused or illegitimate entitlements to go unnoticed. The problem becomes especially acute during offboarding — the period between an employee's actual departure and the systematic deactivation of their accounts.
During this window, known as the offboarding gap, credentials can potentially be misused even after the employment relationship has ended. In worst-case scenarios, former staff members or external parties could exploit these dormant accounts.
NIS2, DORA and BAIT Raise the Compliance Bar
The pressure to address these vulnerabilities no longer comes solely from business efficiency considerations. A tightening regulatory landscape across Europe has made continuous access management a legal obligation.
Directives and frameworks including NIS2, DORA and the German BAIT supervisory requirements now demand that companies maintain rigorous IT governance and risk management practices. Sporadic checks — for instance, reviewing permissions only when a user account is first created — no longer satisfy the regulators.
Supervisory authorities expect complete oversight and documentation of access rights throughout the entire lifecycle of a digital identity. Processes must be designed to prevent unauthorised access proactively, with any deviation from the intended state flagged immediately.
Time-Limited Access and Risk-Based Reviews as Countermeasures
Security experts advocate a combination of technical and organisational fixes to curb permission drift. One cornerstone is the introduction of time-bound access: entitlements granted for holiday cover or short-term projects should carry an automatic expiry date within the system itself, removing the reliance on manual revocation.
A second recommendation is risk-based recertification. Rather than reviewing all permissions at uniform intervals — the so-called watering-can approach — organisations should prioritise critical access paths and scrutinise them more frequently.
Specialised analytics tools can also help detect "exit drifts," revealing whether accounts belonging to former employees remain active or whether access rights persist contrary to internal policy.
The overarching goal is to make permission drift measurable. Only when companies can quantify the gap between required and actually granted rights can they take targeted corrective action — and demonstrate compliance with the regulatory framework.
