Why Traditional GRC Tools Fall Short on Detailed User Access Reviews (UAR)

Introduction

Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) tools have become essential for organizations looking to streamline audits, automate evidence collection, and demonstrate adherence to compliance frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS. Platforms such as Drata, Sprinto, Vanta, Delve, and Secureframe have lowered the barrier to entry for compliance readiness.

Yet, when it comes to User Access Reviews (UAR)—also called access review certifications—traditional GRC platforms lack the depth and intelligence needed to achieve least privilege and identity risk reduction.

UAR is more than an audit requirement. It is a cornerstone of identity security, ensuring that users only retain the access necessary to perform their roles, while removing unused, risky, or excessive entitlements. Traditional GRC tools, however, approach UAR from a compliance-first perspective, treating it as a periodic checklist exercise. The result: certifications that may pass audits but fail to meaningfully improve security posture.

Purpose-built UAR platforms like BalkanID close this gap—and importantly, integrates with existing GRC platforms to create a compliance + security fabric that neither solution achieves alone.

Why Traditional GRC Tools Struggle with UAR

1. High-Level, Checklist-Driven Reviews

Most GRC platforms present UARs at the system or group level. Reviewers are asked broad questions such as, “Does this user still need access to this application?”—with little visibility into the specific entitlements, roles, or privileges that actually drive risk.

This checklist approach satisfies auditors but undermines the principle of least privilege. Without fine-grained insights, risky permissions remain invisible.

2. Limited Visibility into Fine-Grained Entitlements

Traditional GRC suites rarely provide detailed entitlement-level visibility. This means they cannot:

• Differentiate between Admin vs. Read-only access in SaaS applications.
• Detect segregation-of-duties (SoD) violations, where two innocuous roles become risky in combination.
• Map relationships across SaaS, cloud, and on-prem environments.

As a result, organizations relying on GRC tools for UAR struggle to spot excessive or conflicting privileges.

3. Static, Periodic Certifications

Traditional UAR in GRC tools is typically quarterly or annual. These static snapshots do little to address day-to-day risks such as entitlement creep, insider threats, or privilege misuse.

Without continuous access reviews, organizations are blind to risks that surface between certification cycles.

4. No Built-In Remediation or Workflow Triggers

When a reviewer flags unnecessary access in a GRC-driven UAR, the decision often stops there. Most GRC platforms lack native integration to:

• Automatically de-provision the access.
• Generate ITSM tickets for follow-up.
• Trigger downstream workflows or playbooks in ServiceNow, Okta Workflows, or automation frameworks.

This gap leaves remediation dependent on manual intervention—slowing down response and creating opportunities for risky entitlements to persist.

5. Lack of Risk Intelligence

GRC platforms generally treat all entitlements equally. There are no analytics to:

• Highlight high-risk or unused privileges.
• Flag dormant accounts.
• Recommend removal actions based on usage or risk posture.

The absence of intelligence leads to reviewer fatigue, where decision-makers default to blanket approvals rather than risk-based choices.

A Purpose-Built Alternative: Intelligent UAR Platforms

To overcome these challenges, organizations are increasingly adopting platforms purpose-built for detailed UAR, such as BalkanID.

Deep, Graph-Powered Visibility

• Discover who has access to what and why, down to the entitlement and role level.
• Map access relationships across SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, and on-prem systems.
• Detect toxic role combinations and SoD conflicts automatically.

Continuous Access Reviews

• Move beyond static, periodic certifications to always-on monitoring.
• Proactively flag excessive access, entitlement creep, or policy violations in real time.
• Enable “certify as you go” workflows instead of waiting for audits.

Automated Remediation & Workflow Integration

• Translate reviewer decisions into direct action:
  • De-provision automatically via integrations.
  • Create tickets for ITSM systems.
  • Trigger downstream playbooks to enforce policy.
• Close the loop between review and remediation.

Risk-Aware & AI-Assisted Reviews

• Prioritize reviews by risk level, sensitivity, and usage history.
• Provide AI-driven insights along with a priority inbox to speed up approvals or removals.
• Reduce fatigue while improving review accuracy.

Flexible Multi-Level Workflows

• Support complex review chains (Manager → Business Owner → App Owner).
• Allow delegated reviews across distributed teams.
• Adapt processes to organizational growth and complexity.

Audit-Ready Outputs

• Generate customized, audit-ready reports aligned to compliance frameworks.
• Demonstrate not only that reviews occurred, but that real risks were reduced.
• Save hours of manual reporting work.

How UAR Complements GRC Tools

BalkanID UAR complements and integrates ****with GRC tools. Together they create a complete security governance stack:

• Evidence sync: BalkanID can export audit-ready reports, certification evidence, and decision can directly be fed into GRC platforms like Drata, Sprinto, or Vanta. This ensures UAR evidence is always available where auditors expect it.
• Control mapping: GRC platforms track “control coverage”; BalkanID supplies the detailed UAR data that maps directly to access-related controls across SOC 2, ISO, HIPAA, and SOX.
• Workflow integration: UAR remediation decisions in BalkanID can trigger tickets or notifications that flow back into the GRC system’s workflow engine, keeping compliance and security aligned.
• Single-pane view for compliance teams: Security teams use BalkanID for detailed reviews; compliance teams continue using their GRC dashboard, now enriched with deeper UAR data.

It’s not about choosing between GRC or UAR—the two serve different but complementary purposes.

• GRC tools provide the compliance scaffolding: mapping controls, gathering evidence, managing policies, and demonstrating audit readiness.
• UAR platforms provide the depth: entitlement-level visibility, continuous reviews, risk intelligence, and automated remediation.

Together, they create a more complete picture:

• GRC tools answer the auditor’s question: “Did you certify user access this quarter?”
• UAR platforms answer the security team’s question: “Is every identity’s access appropriate and least privileged, right now?”

By integrating the two, organizations can satisfy auditors while also reducing real-world risk—achieving both compliance and security outcomes.

Why This Matters

Organizations that rely solely on traditional GRC tools for UAR face a critical gap: compliance without security. Auditors may be satisfied, but entitlement creep, insider threats, and privilege misuse remain unchecked.

By contrast, a dedicated UAR platform enables organizations to:

• Enforce least privilege through fine-grained entitlement insights.
• Maintain continuous assurance instead of periodic snapshots.
• Close the loop with automated de-provisioning and workflows.
• Make smarter, risk-based decisions with AI assistance.
• Deliver both audit compliance and measurable risk reduction.

Conclusion

User Access Reviews are not just an audit requirement—they are one of the most important controls for identity security.

Traditional GRC tools were never designed to handle detailed UAR at the entitlement and workflow level. They simplify compliance but fail to provide the visibility, intelligence, and automation necessary to reduce real-world identity risk.

Purpose-built platforms like BalkanID elevate UAR into a continuous, intelligent process that enforces least privilege, reduces risk, and strengthens security—while still satisfying auditors.

By integrating BalkanID UAR with GRC platforms, organizations achieve the best of both worlds:

• Compliance assurance through GRC workflows.
• Security depth through continuous, intelligent, and automated access reviews.

The outcome is a governance model that is audit-ready and risk-resilient—a true alignment of compliance and security objectives.

About BalkanID

BalkanID provides modular, AI-assisted identity security and access governance solutions—including user access reviews, lifecycle automation with purpose-based just-in-time access, risk/RBAC analysis, and Copilot—designed to work with both connected and disconnected applications.

https://www.balkan.id