How to Identify and Manage Disconnected Apps Across Your Entire IT Environment

There’s a quiet problem lurking inside every fast-moving IT environment, and it’s not phishing, ransomware, or patching delays.

It’s disconnected apps.

These are the tools that don’t integrate with your identity provider (IdP). They don’t support SCIM. Workflows do not automate them. They often live in spreadsheets or CSVs. And yet, they’re used by your employees, contractors, and sometimes even by former employees. They store sensitive data and quietly drain your IT budget.

This blog will break down more about disconnected apps and why they are a significant blind spot for IT, Security, and Compliance teams, and why traditional SaaS management platforms and identity tools are not enough.

What exactly are disconnected apps?

Disconnected apps are tools that don’t integrate with your identity provider (IdP). They’re not automated. SSO or SCIM does not govern them. And yet they’re being used across your company every day, by employees, contractors, and sometimes former team members.

Common examples:

• Apps on lower-tier SaaS plans without SSO/SCIM
• Legacy platforms like NetSuite, ADP, or homegrown systems
• AI tools and browser-based apps with no access controls
• CSV-based systems used by Finance or Ops
• Vendor accounts or tools spun up by Marketing, HR, or Product without IT involvement

If you can’t automatically see who has access or shut it down through your IdP, it’s a disconnected app.

Why disconnected apps are more than an inconvenience

In fast-scaling orgs, disconnected apps create four major problems:

1. Orphaned accounts pose a real security risk

When users leave and their access isn’t revoked, those accounts become prime targets for insider threats or external exploitation. Disconnected apps are where these accounts hide.

2. License waste adds up quickly

Without visibility, licenses remain assigned to inactive users or go unused entirely. Multiply that by 50+ tools across departments, and the spend adds up fast.

3. Compliance reviews break down

Disconnected apps are often where audits fail. Access logs are missing. Evidence is stale.
Compliance teams end up chasing down screenshots, spreadsheets, and CSVs just to prove someone no longer has access.

4. IT loses valuable time

Every manually deprovisioned app requires upkeep, custom logic, and human follow-through. It’s not sustainable at scale.

Why your IdP and SCIM aren’t enough

Most organizations assume their IdP has them covered, but the truth is, only about 60% of SaaS apps are actually connected.

That means nearly half of your stack is still managed manually or not at all. And that number is growing with the rise of AI tools, external vendors, and department-level purchases.

Even when SCIM or SSO is technically available, it often comes at a premium or requires dedicated effort to configure, and that’s assuming the business prioritizes it.

Disconnected apps are no longer edge cases. They’re the new normal.

What leading IT teams are doing about it

We’ve seen a shift: IT, Security, and GRC teams are no longer trying to “force” every app into the SCIM/SSO model. Instead, they’re building processes that treat disconnected apps as part of the core stack.

Here’s what that looks like:

• Continuous discovery of apps and accounts that aren’t managed through your IdP
• Automated audits that don’t rely on native APIs
• Real-time remediation of orphaned and unused accounts
• Visibility across IdPs, CSVs, business systems, and domains

During our live demo, we showed how this works in practice—identifying hidden accounts, cleaning up license waste, and simplifying audit prep across tools most platforms can’t even see.

Real impact we’ve seen in the field

In the last few quarters, Stitchflow has helped teams:

• Remediate over 300 orphaned accounts
• Save $160K+ in unused licenses
• Cut audit prep from two weeks to 15 minutes
• Free up IT bandwidth equivalent to 1–2 FTEs per 1,000 employees

None of this required custom setup, workflow scripting, or upgrading every app to the SCIM-enabled enterprise plan.

“We eliminated two hours of spreadsheet work per offboarding by automating access reviews across disconnected apps, and closed the gap that worried our auditors.”

— Amit Sharma, IT Administrator, Turing

See Stitchflow in action

The takeaway: this is solvable

Disconnected apps aren’t going away. In fact, they’re multiplying, especially with the rise of AI sprawl, contractor churn, and growing SaaS decentralization.

But with the right system in place, you don’t need to treat disconnected apps as exceptions. You can manage them with the same level of visibility, automation, and control as anything else in your stack.

It just takes a new approach.

Want to see how this works in practice?
📅 Book a personalized demo