Third-party access used to mean a few IT consultants with temporary badges. Now, it means hundreds of contractors, vendors, and partners embedded in production systems, managed with the same informal processes that worked when the number was small.
That gap shows up in the data. Third-party data breaches made up more than 35% of all incidents in 2025, which is double the previous year’s figure.
And the pain shows up from both directions. Here’s what one IT professionaldescribed on Reddit: “Does anyone else have issues with management on non-employees? This can include contractors, vendors, interns, etc. Seems to have an issue where HR is is not handling the management of non-employees so oftentimes they have access after they are no longer with the company, and on the other side they don’t get access to anything because we don’t know they’ve started at the company.”
This article covers how to build the same governance rigor for non-employees that most organizations already apply to their workforce.
Why managing the non-employee lifecycle is so difficult
Employee access management works because it has clear ownership, a single source of truth, and automated triggers tied to HR events. Non-employee access lacks all three.
A few structural gaps explain why:
The round peg problem
Problem:84% of companies now use contingent workers, yet most IAM and IGA platforms still assume employees are the primary identity type. They’re built around HR-driven workflows, predictable start and end dates, and stable role assignments. Non-employees break those assumptions at every step.
Why it happens: Contractors, vendors, and consultants don’t exist in the HRIS. Teams improvise with manual onboarding, shared spreadsheets, and workarounds that create inconsistency from day one.
Consequence: Inconsistent provisioning leads to inconsistent offboarding. Some accounts get cleaned up. Others persist indefinitely, which brings exactly the kind of orphaned access that attackers look for.
Decentralized shadow management
Problem: Non-employee access decisions happen everywhere. Engineering brings in contractors, marketing hires freelancers, and finance engages auditors. Each team handles provisioning and offboarding their own way, with no central visibility into who has access to what.
Why it happens: Business units move fast and manage their own third-party relationships. Without a defined business process, they provision access through whatever path offers the least friction. Here’s how one Reddit user explained it:
“There is granting access (via federation, or a non-employee source of truth, or some other kind of IdP) and there is managing access, the ongoing attestation or governance of permissions.”
The user goes on to explain that allowing access can be easy but also troublesome.
Consequence: Access sprawls invisibly. By the time security or IT gets involved, there are dozens of active accounts they didn’t know existed and can’t confidently account for.
Digital account sprawl
Problem: A single contractor might have accounts in Slack, Jira, GitHub, AWS, and a handful of SaaS tools. The average enterprise runs275 SaaS applications. Multiply that across dozens or hundreds of non-employees, and you get a sprawl of access that no one team fully tracks.
Why it happens: Each system has its own provisioning path. Some accounts come through IT, others through department admins, and others through self-service signups. There’s no single identity record tying them together. That fragmentation shows up at offboarding, according to this Reddit post:
Consequence: Deprovisioning is incomplete by default. Revoking access from one system doesn’t revoke it from the others, which only leaves gaps that stay long after the relationship ends.
Complexity of hybrid environments
Problem: Most organizations run a mix of cloud, on-prem, and SaaS. Non-employees often need access across all three, but identity management in each environment operates independently.
Why it happens: Organizations adopted these systems at different times, for different purposes, with different identity security models. Unifying identity across all of them is hard enough for employees. For non-employees, it rarely happens at all.
Consequence: Access gets managed environment by environment. A contractor might be offboarded from cloud systems but remain active in an on-prem application that nobody remembered to check.
PRO TIP: ConductorOne offers 300+ pre-built connectors that cover cloud, on-prem, SaaS, and homegrown applications. Non-employee access across your entire stack shows up in one place, so you’re not piecing together information from systems that were never designed to work together.
Key strategies for effective non-employee management
Closing the gap means treating non-employee access with the same rigor as employee access. That includes building dedicated processes, assigning clear ownership, and implementing tooling that accounts for how third-party relationships actually work.
Here are a few core strategies that make the difference:
Strategy 1: Establish a golden record via sponsorship
The approach: Every non-employee identity needs a single accountable owner inside the organization before access is granted. This sponsor becomes responsible for the relationship, the access, and the eventual offboarding. Some organizations already operate this way. As one user described on Reddit:
How to implement:
- Have a named internal sponsor for every contractor, vendor, or consultant as a prerequisite to provisioning any access
- Make the sponsor accountable for attesting that the non-employee still needs data access during periodic reviews
- Automatically trigger access review notifications when sponsors change roles or leave the organization
- Build sponsorship into procurement and onboarding workflows so it becomes a default step rather than an afterthought
- Set up clear escalation paths for when sponsors are unresponsive during certification campaigns
Example: A consulting firm sends three people to work on a finance transformation project. The finance director who asked for the engagement is assigned as the sponsor for all three identities. When the project ends, or the director moves to another role, the system flags those accounts and functions for review.
Strategy 2: Automate provisioning with least privilege access
The approach: Non-employees should receive access rights based on what their engagement needs, not based on what’s easiest to provision. Automation makes least privilege the default by mapping access to role templates rather than individual requests.
How to implement:
- Define access templates for common non-employee types (IT contractor, marketing consultant, audit firm, implementation partner) with pre-approved permissions scoped to the minimum required
- Route all provisioning requests through a centralized system that applies template selection instead of ad-hoc access grants
- Build time-bound access into the default workflow so permissions expire automatically (unless explicitly renewed)
- Integrate provisioning with contract and SOW data so access aligns with the documented engagement scope and duration
- Log all provisioning decisions with timestamps, approvers, and justification to maintain a clear audit trail
Example: A vendor is brought in to support a Salesforce implementation. Instead of the project manager requesting access system by system, they select “CRM Implementation Partner” from the provisioning workflow. The vendor automatically receives access to the Salesforce sandbox, relevant documentation in SharePoint, and a limited Slack channel, with all permissions set to expire at the contract end date.
PRO TIP: ConductorOne’s policy-driven access controls let you enforce least privilege by default. Define what each non-employee type should have access to, and the platform provisions exactly that, every time, without manual intervention.
Strategy 3: Enforce just-in-time (JIT) access
The approach: Permanent access for temporary work doesn’t make sense. Just-in-time provisioning grants non-employees access only when they need it and revokes it automatically when the task is complete.
How to implement:
- Replace persistent credentials with on-demand access requests that need approval and expire after a defined time window
- Integrate JIT workflows with ticketing or project management systems so access requests are tied to specific tasks or incidents
- Set maximum session durations based on system sensitivity, with automatic revocation when the window closes
- Implement real-time alerts when JIT access is requested for high-risk systems, so security teams can still have insight into what’s happening
Example: A security consultant is brought in to investigate a potential incident. They submit a JIT request scoped to the affected systems, with access granted for a six-hour window. If the investigation runs longer, they submit a new request with updated justification.
PRO TIP: ConductorOne supports just-in-time access to any application or resource. Contractors and vendors request elevated permissions when they need them, access is granted for a specific duration, and revocation fires automatically when the time expires.
Strategy 4: Automate deprovisioning
The approach: Access gets provisioned with urgency. It gets deprovisioned whenever someone gets around to it. Automated offboarding fixes that asymmetry by making revocation as systematic as the original access grant. One practitioner framed the baseline expectation on Reddit:
How to implement:
- Link non-employee access to contract or SOW end dates so expiration is built in from the start
- Trigger automatic deprovisioning workflows when a sponsor leaves the organization or moves to a different role
- Integrate with procurement and vendor management systems so contract terminations automatically apply access revocation across all connected systems
- Build in grace periods with escalating notifications before final deprovisioning to prevent disruption for purposefully extended engagements
- Run daily or weekly reconciliation jobs that compare active non-employee accounts against valid contracts and outline orphaned access for immediate review
Example: A consulting engagement ends on March 31. Two weeks before, the sponsor receives a notification to confirm whether access should be extended or terminated. No response triggers a second reminder in one week. On April 1, all access is automatically revoked across every system the consultant touched. If the engagement gets extended, the sponsor submits a renewal with updated end dates.
Essential tools and technical controls for securing external access
The strategies above only work if the underlying infrastructure supports them. These tools and controls form the technical foundation for managing non-employee identities from onboarding through offboarding:
Advanced authentication (MFA and zero trust)
Non-employees operate outside your security perimeter. They use personal devices, connect from home networks, and don’t have IT looking over their shoulder.
Standard authentication assumes a level of control you don’t have. These controls distribute that burden across multiple verification points.
Control | What it does | When to apply |
MFA (phishing-resistant) | Requires a second factor like a hardware key or authenticator app to verify identity | All non-employee access, no exceptions |
Device posture checks | Validates that the device meets security needs before granting access | Access to sensitive systems or sensitive data |
Conditional access policies | Adjusts access based on location, device, or risk management signals | High-risk scenarios like new devices or unusual locations |
Session monitoring | Tracks activity during active sessions and flags anomalies | Production environments and privileged access |
Continuous verification | Re-validates trust throughout the session rather than just at login | Long-running sessions or elevated permissions |
The point is adaptive trust. Same contractor, different context, different level of scrutiny. A familiar device and location should feel seamless, while a new device hitting sensitive systems should trigger extra verification.
Privileged access management (PAM)
What makes non-employee access risky is less about getting in and more about what they can touch once they’re there. A single compromised contractor account with admin access can spiral into a much larger incident.
PAM controls limit how far that damage can spread:
Control | What it does | Why it matters for non-employees |
Credential vaulting | Stores privileged credentials in an encrypted vault rather than sharing them directly | Removes persistent credentials that outlive engagements |
Session recording | Captures full session activity for privileged access | Creates an audit trail for access you don't directly supervise |
Credential rotation | Automatically changes passwords after each use or on a set schedule | Limits the exposure window if credentials are leaked or retained |
Check-out/check-in workflows | Requires explicit request and approval before credentials are released | Enforces accountability and prevents always-on privileged access |
Session isolation | Routes privileged sessions through a secure gateway rather than a direct connection | Keeps credentials off non-employee devices entirely |
Break-glass procedures | Provides an emergency access path with stronger logging and alerts | Maintains access for urgent scenarios without bypassing controls |
For admin access in external hands, you need a shorter leash. PAM provides that through vaulted credentials, recorded sessions, and access that expires the moment the work is done.
Continuous monitoring and SIEM integration
Authentication and PAM controls handle the front door, while continuous monitoring watches what happens after someone walks through it.
Non-employee activity is generally harder to track because it spans multiple systems, follows unpredictable patterns, and comes from devices you don’t manage. SIEM integration brings all of that scattered activity into one place.
Here’s what to monitor and why it matters:
What to monitor | What to look for | Why it matters for non-employees |
Authentication events | Failed logins, logins from new locations or devices, logins outside normal hours | Non-employees have less predictable patterns, making anomalies easier to miss |
Access patterns | Requests for systems outside the normal scope, sudden spikes in access volume | Points to potential credential compromise or scope creep |
Privileged actions | Admin commands, configuration changes, and permission modifications | Elevated activity from third parties warrants closer scrutiny |
Data movement | Large downloads, bulk exports, and access to sensitive repositories | Non-employees shouldn't typically move large volumes of data |
Session behavior | Unusually long sessions, idle sessions, multiple concurrent sessions | May point to credential sharing or unauthorized access use cases |
The value is in correlation. A single anomaly might mean nothing, but multiple anomalies from the same non-employee account in a short window should trigger immediate review.
Eliminate the shadow identity blind spot with ConductorOne
Process improvements only go so far without the right platform underneath them. Legacy IGA tools weren’t built for modern third-party access.
They assume a clean HR feed, predictable lifecycles, and a manageable number of applications – non-employee user access breaks all three assumptions.
ConductorOne takes a different approach. It’s an identity governance platform built for modern environments. It brings all identity types into a single system of record, so security teams get the visibility and automation they need to manage non-employee access at scale.
Key features include:
- Unified Identity Graph: ConductorOne aggregates identity data from every connected system into one place. That means complete visibility into non-employee access without the manual work of stitching together information from multiple sources.
- Just-in-time (JIT) access: The platform supports time-bound access to any application or resource. Non-employees get exactly what they need for exactly as long as they need it, and revocation happens without manual intervention.
- Policy-driven access controls: Different identity types can follow different rules. Contractors might require sponsor sign-off before any access is granted, while vendors might face stricter approval chains for sensitive systems.
- 300+ pre-built connectors: The platform plugs into your existing environment without a lengthy implementation. Cloud, on-prem, legacy systems, custom applications. If non-employees have access to it, ConductorOne can connect to it.
- Orphaned account detection: Stale accounts and unused permissions don’t stay hidden. ConductorOne identifies orphaned access across your environment so you can clean it up before it becomes a security incident or audit finding.
- Automated identity lifecycle management: Build no-code workflows that handle provisioning, role changes, and offboarding automatically. Contracts end, sponsors leave, engagements close, and access gets revoked without anyone needing to remember to do it.
- Self-service across Slack, Teams, and CLI: Non-employees can request access through familiar tools while approval workflows and governance policies run in the background.
Non-employee access is a solvable problem. The visibility, automation, and governance you apply to full-time employees can extend to contractors and vendors with the right infrastructure in place.
Book a demo to see how ConductorOne makes that possible.
Non-employee access management FAQs
How does identity governance for non-employees differ from standard IAM?
Traditional IAM was built around employees. It relies on human resources as the source of truth, assumes predictable lifecycle events, and ties access to stable roles.
Non-employee governance has to account for identities that don’t exist in HR, relationships that vary in length and scope, and access that often spans multiple systems without centralized tracking.
The core principles are the same, but the mechanics need to flex for a population that doesn’t follow general employee patterns.
What are the security risks of manual access provisioning for vendors?
Manual provisioning introduces access risk at every step of the lifecycle:
- Vendors receive inconsistent access depending on who handles the request and what template they follow
- Permissions tend to be generous because scoping access properly takes more time than granting broad access
- Offboarding gets missed because no system triggers revocation when a contract ends
- Audit trails are incomplete or nonexistent, so it’s much more difficult to prove who approved access and when
How can we streamline the lifecycle for temporary workers?
The first step is to define temporary workers as their own identity category with purpose-built workflows. From there, a few practices matter most:
- Assign a sponsor before any access is granted
- Use predefined templates that match access to what the role truly requires
- Set expiration dates on all access grants based on contract or project timelines
- Automate deprovisioning so accounts don’t linger after engagements close
- Run periodic attestations where sponsors confirm access is still necessary
How does automated management help with regulatory requirements?
Regulations like SOX, HIPAA, and GDPR all expect organizations to control access to sensitive systems and show evidence that they’re doing it.
Automation makes that evidence easy to produce. Every access grant and revocation is logged automatically, policies apply the same way every time, and reviews happen on schedule with clear records of who approved what.
The documentation builds itself as part of how you manage access every day.
