How to Identify and Eliminate Toxic Access Combinations During Reviews

When organizations conduct a user access review, they’re often focused on validating whether employees still need access to systems or applications based on their role. But an often-overlooked risk lies in toxic access combinations—situations where a user has access to multiple systems or permissions that, when combined, pose a significant security or compliance risk.

Think of it this way: having access to either "create vendors" or "process payments" in an ERP system might be fine. But when a user has both permissions, they could potentially create fake vendors and issue fraudulent payments. That’s toxic access—and it’s a major red flag for auditors and security teams alike.

Here’s how to identify and eliminate toxic access combinations during your next user access review, and how identity governance and administration can help you stay ahead of the risks.

What Are Toxic Access Combinations?

Toxic access combinations occur when two or more permissions—when held by the same user—can be exploited for malicious activity or unintentional damage. These combinations often bypass the principles of separation of duties (SoD), a key concept in internal controls and compliance.

Common examples of toxic combinations include:

• Create and approve invoices

• User provisioning and access review approval

• Modify payroll and approve salary disbursements

Left unchecked, these combinations can lead to fraud, insider threats, and regulatory violations.

Why Toxic Combinations Are Hard to Spot

Many companies struggle to identify toxic access because:

• Permissions are buried across multiple systems

• Reviews are conducted manually using spreadsheets

• Business roles are not clearly mapped to technical permissions

• Reviewers lack context during the decision-making process

That’s where structured identity governance and administration solutions come in—they provide visibility, context, and automated detection for risky access overlaps.

Step 1: Define What Constitutes "Toxic" for Your Business

Every organization has unique processes and risks. What’s considered toxic in a healthcare system might differ from a retail business or a financial institution. Start by identifying:

• Key business processes

• Critical systems and data

• Actions that should never be combined under one user’s control

Use industry frameworks like SoD matrices to help classify and map these risk areas.

Step 2: Map Roles and Permissions

Understanding your access landscape is critical. Map out:

• All roles and their associated permissions

• Which users hold which roles

• Cross-system access paths (e.g., ERP + CRM)

Modern identity governance tools can help visualize and analyze access relationships, making it easier to spot toxic overlaps.

Step 3: Use Automated Risk Rules

Most identity governance and administration solutions come with pre-built or customizable risk rules. These rules flag toxic combinations automatically based on your defined SoD policies.

During a user access review, these tools:

• Highlight high-risk users

• Show which combinations violate policy

• Recommend remediation steps (e.g., revoke one of the permissions)

This not only improves accuracy but saves tons of manual effort.

Step 4: Enforce Least Privilege & Review Regularly

Once you’ve identified toxic combinations, take action:

• Reassign permissions to separate roles

• Enforce least privilege by removing access no longer needed

• Set up periodic access reviews to ensure toxic combinations don’t reappear

Identity governance solutions can help you track changes, alert on policy violations, and ensure accountability.

Final Thoughts

Toxic access combinations are silent threats that can fly under the radar if user access reviews are done without context or automation. By using a smart strategy and the right identity governance and administration solutions, you can proactively detect and eliminate these risks before they lead to major compliance or security issues.

Remember, it’s not just about who has access — but what combinations of access they hold. Clean, risk-aware access is the cornerstone of a strong identity governance program.