Least privilege decays over time
Least privilege is not a state you reach, it is a state you maintain, and it degrades on its own.
Every exception granted under pressure, every role change where the old access stayed, every permission widened to unblock a deployment. None of these are unreasonable individually and nothing ever gets taken back, because removal has no deadline and breaking something has an immediate cost. Without a deliberate review, a carefully scoped set of permissions becomes an over-privileged one within a couple of years.
More on Authorisation and privilege
- Break-glass access should be exceptional and noisyLoud on purpose
- Privilege boundaries matter more than job titlesRead the account, not the business card
- Permission inheritance can hide excessive accessGranted upstairs, arrives downstairs
- Wildcard permissions widen blast radiusOne character, a much bigger circle
- Deny rules can create hard guardrailsOne no ends it
- Admin tools are part of the privileged access pathThe hand is not on the system