A colleague moves from operations to sales, but still has production access. A contractor finishes a project, while an invitation remains active in a separate tool. These are ordinary changes that an access review needs to catch without making every employee’s work harder.
Review a complete path to access
Choose a business-critical application and identify its owner, identity provider, local accounts, administrative roles, and external guests. Include service accounts and integration credentials in the inventory, while keeping secrets out of the review document.
Ask the owner to confirm the purpose of each entitlement. A recent login does not prove that access is still needed, and an account with no recent login may support a scheduled process. The review needs operational context, not just an activity report.
Make decisions actionable
For each exception, record who needs access, why, and when it should be reconsidered. Microsoft’s access review guidance describes recurring reviews of group memberships, application access, and role assignments. Use those capabilities where they fit, and give unsupported applications an explicit manual owner.
Process departures promptly through the normal offboarding workflow rather than waiting for the next review. When removing access, check active sessions, independent application accounts, and credentials that the person managed. Coordinate service-credential changes with the teams that use them.
Verify that the decision took effect
A completed spreadsheet is not proof of a completed removal. Confirm the resulting group membership or application state, and retain a record of the change. Test a sample of access paths with the application owner. Track unresolved exceptions until they are closed, with a named person responsible for each one.
