Invisible Risks: The Reality of Service Accounts
In many companies, service accounts are a blind spot – technically necessary, but often ignored from an organizational perspective. They are created automatically, are rarely documented and sometimes even outlive their original function. Often no one knows what a particular account is actually for, who created it or whether it is still needed.
Particularly critical: many of these accounts have far-reaching access rights and run under privileged roles. If security gaps arise here, it is often noticed too late – or never. These are not marginal phenomena, but structural weaknesses in identity and access management.
When Control Is Missing: Why Blind Spots Are Dangerous
Blind spots in service account management are not just annoying – they are tangible risks for operations, security and compliance. Without complete transparency, there is a risk of serious consequences.
Accounts with far-reaching access rights can be compromised if they are not checked regularly. However, compliance requirements such as ISO 27001, SOC 2 or the BSI IT baseline protection profile demand consistent lifecycle management – which is often not implemented. Unplanned system failures can also be the result if old accounts point to interfaces or services that no longer exist.
How Do These Blind Spots Arise?
The causes rarely lie in the technical area alone – but in a lack of structure, unclear processes and a lack of accountability. Who is responsible for a service account? Who releases it? Who decides when it is deleted?
You often see this in practice:
- Accounts are created, but never formally assigned to a responsible person.
- Once access rights have been set up, they remain in place permanently – even if the tasks change.
- There is no regular review or recertification.
- Data sources are fragmented and no system has a complete overview.
Strategy to Address Blind Spots
The good news is that even if blind spots are deeply rooted in the system, they can be identified and eliminated with the right strategy. The way to achieve this begins with a clearly structured governance model – which takes into account not only technical but also organizational aspects.
A proven approach is divided into four phases:
- Discover – A complete inventory of all accounts.
- Prioritize – assessment according to risk and criticality.
- Onboard – Integrate systems, define processes.
- Govern – Control access, implement recertification.
How NEXIS 4 Eliminates Blind Spots
NEXIS 4 addresses precisely these weak points – not just selectively, but holistically. By integrating a wide variety of data sources, NEXIS 4 creates a central identity model that makes service accounts visible and controllable.
With NEXIS 4, service accounts become:
- Visible: through a complete, correlated overview of all accounts.
- Controllable: through automated lifecycle processes and clear responsibilities.
- Monitorable: through recertification mechanisms and anomaly detection.
- Auditable: through complete documentation, reporting and compliance coverage.
NEXIS 4 HealthCheck: Outting your service account landscape to the test
NEXIS 4 offers a dedicated HealthCheck offering for organizations that do not know exactly where they stand. In this compact assessment, we analyze your existing service account landscape – and uncover potential risks and areas for improvement.
The HealthCheck includes:
- Recording and evaluating your existing service accounts.
- Identification of orphaned and privileged accounts.
- Analysis of existing data sources, lifecycle processes and governance models.
- Recommendations for action to optimize your service account governance.
Do you want to know if there are any blind spots in your organization? Then let’s find out together. Take the first step – with the NEXIS 4 HealthCheck! We will get back to you shortly with a non-binding proposal