60% of enterprise SaaS and AI applications operate outside IT’s visibility, according to CloudEagle.ai. This surge in invisible IT is fueling a crisis in AI identity governance, leading to increased breaches, audit failures, and compliance risk across enterprises.
A survey of 1,000 enterprise CIOs and CISOs shows a shift: most security breaches now start inside the organization. The main problems are too many user permissions, unused accounts, and poor identity management. Manual onboarding, rare access checks, and disconnected offboarding make things worse.
Seventy percent of CIOs said unsanctioned AI tools are a major data risk, and nearly half of former employees still have access to company apps months after they’ve left.
“Traditional IAM tools can’t keep up with today’s SaaS and AI-driven environments because not all apps are managed by IT, and not everything sits behind a centralized IAM system. IGA is at a tipping point, and enterprises must shift to AI-driven access management to stay secure and compliant,” says Nidhi Jain, CEO at CloudEagle.ai.
Key findings from the report show the scale of access sprawl:
- 1 in 2 employees have excessive privileges
- Only 15% have implemented Just-In-Time (JIT) access across departments
- 50% admit privilege creep is common, yet only 5% enforce least-privilege policies
The report calls on organizations to take a more active approach and adopt AI identity governance to reduce risk and regain control. It’s now seen as a key part of security, and these teams are finally getting the budget, backing, and urgency they need, similar to what security operations teams have had. This shift is helping them manage and secure the growing use of AI and SaaS tools.
- Implement context-aware, zero-trust access controls
- Hire a Chief Identity Officer (CIDO) to unify governance across all teams
- Auto-provision/deprovision apps based on real-time usage
- Enforce JIT access for high-risk roles to eliminate standing privileges
- Run continuous, behavioral AI-based access reviews
