Inventory people and machines
A useful identity register includes employees, contractors, administrators, integrations, API keys and service accounts. Link each identity to a business owner, purpose and review date. Accounts may survive long after the work that justified them. Visibility enables targeted removal instead of emergency broad restrictions. The register should cover critical vendors and identities that never interact with a login screen.
Protect privileged operations
A valid login must not imply unlimited access. Put stronger verification around changing permissions, exporting sensitive records, modifying payment settings and deploying production code. Use role-specific rights, short-lived access where feasible and approval for exceptional privileges. Review both interactive and automated identities. Security friction should concentrate on high-impact actions rather than every routine task.
Rehearse containment
Assume a credential can leak. Test how quickly the team can revoke it, end active sessions, rotate integration secrets and preserve the audit trail. Identify who may authorize containment when normal management is unavailable. A record of actor, system, action and time should support reconstruction. Alert volume is less important than reliable decisions during the first minutes.
Measure operational coverage
Report reviewed privileged identities, dormant accounts retired, access exceptions with documented approval and the elapsed time to revoke a compromised account. These measures expose whether policies work in practice. NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 provides a broader governance perspective across prevention, detection, response and recovery.