Top 10 User Access Review Mistakes and Strategies to Prevent Them

User access reviews are critical for security and compliance, yet many IT teams struggle to get them right. With the average enterprise using 1,295 cloud services, tracking who has access to what across your environment is no small task.

Small mistakes—like missing inactive accounts, over-provisioning privileges, or relying on outdated spreadsheets—can leave your organization exposed to security risks and create extra work for your team.

In this article, we’ll break down the 10 most common user access review mistakes and share practical strategies to avoid them, helping your team streamline processes, reduce risk, and maintain compliance without unnecessary complexity.

TL;DR

• User access reviews often fail when teams don’t set clear objectives, leading to wasted effort and little actionable insight.
• Spreadsheets break down at scale, creating errors, poor audit trails, and unnecessary manual work for IT teams.
• Reviews that treat all accounts the same miss critical risks; high-risk users and systems must be prioritized.
• Inconsistent documentation undermines compliance and slows investigations, making it hard to prove controls during audits.
• Modern SaaS management tools like Stitchflow streamline access reviews with 100% app coverage, AI-driven risk scoring, audit-ready reporting, and automated remediation.

Mistake 1: Not establishing clear objectives

Many teams jump into a user access review without defining what they actually want to achieve. Are you aiming to tick boxes for a compliance audit, or is the goal to identify and reduce security risks? Both are valid, but they require very different approaches.

Clear objectives are crucial because they align your team, focus efforts, and shape the review process. Without them, reviews can quickly become time-consuming exercises that generate little actionable insight. When you know whether you’re prioritizing compliance, security, or both, you can streamline the review, gather the right evidence, and address risks effectively.

How to establish clear objectives for user access reviews

• Understand drivers: Identify whether your review is driven by compliance, a recent security incident, or a proactive security posture.
• Define scope: Decide if the review covers all systems or focuses on high-risk applications.
• Set key metrics: Determine how success will be measured—revoked permissions, time spent, or compliance checklist completion.

👉 If you’re looking for a structured way to align objectives and eliminate ambiguity, try the free Stitchflow App Access Policy Matrix. It helps IT teams quickly define who should have access to what—making reviews easier to scope, measure, and audit.

Mistake 2: Relying too heavily on spreadsheets

Spreadsheets might feel like the obvious choice for user access reviews, but in practice, they quickly become unmanageable. Data often ends up scattered across multiple files, version control gets messy, and tracking changes over time is nearly impossible.

Manual copy-pasting, reconciling conflicting information, and troubleshooting errors turn what should be a straightforward review into a major drain on productivity—and one small mistake can create false positives or obscure real security risks.

⚠️This is a serious problem because spreadsheets hide errors, break audit trails, and make it easy to miss critical access issues. Like who made changes—or why—is difficult, and this complicates compliance and security investigations.

How to automate and streamline user access reviews

• Invest in a tool: Use a solution designed specifically for user access reviews.
• Centralized data: Pull access data from all systems into one place.
• Audit trails: Track all approvals and revocations with timestamps and approver information.
• Reporting and visualization: Leverage customizable dashboards and reports to monitor trends and quickly spot anomalies.

Spreadsheets can’t deliver on those capabilities at scale. They lack centralized data, offer no real audit trail, and force IT into manual reporting.

That’s why many teams are turning to purpose-built platforms like Stitchflow, which automatically unifies user access data across every app—including non-SCIM and disconnected tools—and keeps reviews consistent, auditable, and far less error-prone.

Mistake 3: Failing to engage the right stakeholders

User access reviews that happen only in IT can risk missing crucial context. Without input from department heads, data owners, and other stakeholders, reviews can be inaccurate or incomplete, leaving unnecessary access in place—or revoking access users actually need.

Engaging stakeholders ensures access aligns with real job responsibilities, provides insight IT alone can’t see, and spreads accountability for security across the organization instead of leaving it solely on IT.

How to bring stakeholders into the access review process

• Identify stakeholders: Include data owners, application owners, and department heads.
• Define roles and responsibilities: Clarify what IT expects (approvals, justifications) and what stakeholders can expect from IT (support, documentation).
• Communicate regularly: Keep stakeholders informed about review timelines, progress, and issues.
• Consider a data governance committee: Formalize cross-functional representation to streamline decision-making.

📚Also read: 6 access policy struggles that IT pros face (and how to solve them)

Mistake 4: Not prioritizing reviews based on risk

Treating every user and system the same during an access review leads to overwhelm and wasted effort. Not all access carries the same risk—admin accounts, dormant users, or access to sensitive data represent far greater exposure than low-risk systems. Ignoring this creates inefficiencies, increases the chance of missing critical vulnerabilities, and contributes to reviewer fatigue, making it harder to maintain consistent, effective reviews. Prioritizing by risk ensures IT teams focus on what matters most, uncover meaningful issues, and reduce the organization’s overall exposure.

How to focus reviews on high-risk access

• Risk classification: Categorize systems and data by sensitivity (financial info, PII, intellectual property) and tag them in your system inventory.
• Identify high-risk users: Target admin accounts, users with access to sensitive data, and dormant accounts; highlight outliers with tools when available.
• Tiered review cadence: Review high-risk areas more frequently (e.g., quarterly) and low-risk areas less often (e.g., annually).
• Continuous assessment: Treat risk evaluation as ongoing, not a one-time task.

💡Features like Stitchflow’s AI Risk Scoring Engine add another layer of clarity. By evaluating each app and user against 60+ factors—including sensitivity, activity patterns, and compliance posture—it surfaces the riskiest access first.

That way, IT teams don’t waste cycles on low-impact reviews and can prioritize high-exposure accounts with confidence.

Mistake 5: Overlooking user role changes

People move around—promotions, team changes, new responsibilities—and their access should move with them. When access reviews don’t keep up, users can end up holding permissions they no longer need, which opens doors for security breaches. At the same time, they may lack the access required for their new role, causing delays and a flood of access requests.

It’s a fast track to frustrated employees, compliance headaches, and unnecessary risk.

How to keep access aligned with role changes

• Integrate with HR systems: Configure your access review process or tool to receive notifications when roles change.
• Review role definitions: Use role changes as an opportunity to update role-based access definitions and ensure they reflect the current organizational structure.

Mistake 6: Neglecting third-party and contractor access

Vendors, contractors, and external collaborators often need system access to do their jobs—but their accounts are frequently overlooked in SaaS user access reviews. This blind spot can be exploited by attackers, leaving your systems vulnerable. Even if a breach originates from a third party, your organization may still be liable for the loss of sensitive data.

On top of that, contractor projects end and vendor relationships change, yet access often lingers, creating unnecessary risk.

How to automate and secure third-party access

• Maintain a third-party inventory: Track all external accounts, what they can access, and contract end dates.
• Dedicated review process: Set up a separate workflow for third-party access, involving procurement, legal, or other relevant stakeholders.
• Prioritize high-risk accounts: Focus reviews on vendors with access to sensitive systems or data.
• Leverage user management tools: Use identity management tools like Okta to flag and track external accounts.
• Tie access to lifecycle: Grant access only when needed and revoke promptly when engagements end.

Mistake 7: Review fatigue for approvers

Managers and business stakeholders often get buried under massive spreadsheets or long lists of access rights. When the workload is overwhelming, reviews get rushed, approvals become careless, or stakeholders adopt a “just accept everything” approach—letting inappropriate access slip through. Review fatigue not only undermines security but also diminishes accountability and makes it harder to demonstrate due diligence during audits.

How to reduce approver fatigue

• Implement risk-based reviews: Focus on high-risk users and systems to reduce overall workload.
• Break reviews into smaller batches: Organize by department, system, or risk level instead of one massive review.
• Use workflow-driven tools: Pick UAR tools with clear workflows, filtering, and intuitive interfaces to make the process easy.
• Engage reviewers: Features like gamification or progress tracking can keep reviewers attentive and reduce monotony.

💡Pro tip: Instead of expecting managers to comb through hundreds of entitlements, you can route only the exceptions that need attention into your ITSM system.

Tools like Stitchflow make this quick by automatically generating targeted tickets for flagged accounts, so approvers deal with smaller, more immediate access reviews rather than doing it all at one go during audit season.

Mistake 8: Inconsistent user review cycles

Skipping or delaying access reviews is a fast track to security and compliance problems. Infrequent reviews let dormant accounts pile up, temporary or project-based access linger, and permissions drift away from actual job needs.

Moreover, with remote work and distributed teams, employees move between roles and systems more fluidly than ever. And sporadic reviews make it easy for outdated or excessive access to go unnoticed, creating exploitable gaps and increasing audit risk.

How to make access reviews consistent

• Define a review cadence: Set frequencies based on risk levels and compliance requirements.
• Create a review calendar: Centralize all scheduled reviews and include time for follow-up and remediation.
• Embed reviews in business processes: Tie reviews to onboarding/offboarding and significant role changes to keep access aligned with reality.

Mistake 9: Poor documentation

User access reviews don’t exist in a vacuum. With irregular documentation processes, you fail to record what systems were reviewed, who participated, the access changes requested, the decisions made, and the reasoning behind them.

Without these records, it’s nearly impossible to demonstrate compliance, hold reviewers accountable, or investigate security incidents. This also raises red flags during audits, slows down troubleshooting when access issues arise, and makes it easy for inappropriate access and inactive accounts to persist.

How to maintain proper documentation

• Record key details: Capture system or application reviewed, review date, participants, access changes requested, decisions made, and justifications.
• Centralize records: Keep all documentation in a dedicated UAR tool or secure repository to avoid scattered files.
• Control access and retention: Limit who can view or modify records and retain them according to compliance and internal risk policies.
• Automate where possible: Use UAR tools that generate audit-ready reports and maintain detailed logs of all review activities.

💡Modern SaaS management tools can also write review evidence directly into GRC platforms like Vanta or Drata—eliminating manual CSV exports of access history, while ensuring IT audits have a verifiable trail.

Mistake 10: Failing to act on user access review findings

Identifying inappropriate permissions, outliers, or other access risks is pointless if no action is taken. Reviews without remediation leave your organization exposed, waste your team’s time, and can turn future reviews into a checkbox exercise. When issues aren’t addressed, security gaps remain, morale suffers, and compliance risks increase—even if you have the review records.

How to ensure findings are remediated

• Prioritize remediation: Tackle high-risk findings immediately, while scheduling lower-risk issues on a defined timeline.
• Create a remediation plan: Document each issue, the action required (revoke, request justification, etc.), the responsible party, and a target completion date.
• Use workflow and accountability: Incorporate remediation tasks into your UAR tool, assign owners, and track progress to prevent items from slipping through the cracks.
• Reporting: Include remediation status as a follow-up stage in your overall UAR process.
• Learn and improve: Analyze recurring issues to refine access provisioning and reduce problems in future reviews.

Streamline user access reviews with Stitchflow

User access reviews don’t have to be painful. Where spreadsheets create gaps and traditional IAM tools stop short, Stitchflow closes the loop. It extends governance across every app—federated or not—while keeping processes consistent, auditable, and efficient. The result: fewer missed accounts, faster reviews, and stronger compliance evidence without extra IT burden.

How Stitchflow supports user access reviews:

• 100% app coverage: Get full visibility, including disconnected, non-SCIM, and AI tools.
• Unified IT graph: Stitch together user, role, and usage data across HR, IDPs, and apps.
• Continuous auditing: Automatically detect orphaned, hidden, and unused accounts
• AI risk scoring: Prioritize high-risk users and apps for smarter reviews
• Audit-ready reporting: Generate logs and evidence that can sync directly into GRC tools like Vanta or Drata.
• Automated remediation and ITSM workflows: One-click cleanup or targeted tickets to reduce reviewer fatigue.

Beyond simplifying access reviews, Stitchflow helps IT teams tackle the bigger picture of SaaS governance. It continuously manages disconnected apps and automates deprovisioning. It reclaims unused licenses and surfaces AI-driven risks. The result: lower costs, stronger security, and less repetitive work for IT.

👉 Book a demo and see how Stitchflow simplifies user access reviews with full visibility, automated cleanup, and audit-ready reporting.

👉Try Stitchflow risk-free. Request an on-demand user access review or access policy audit and receive a clear report of risks and unused accounts—your first report is free.