Orphan Account
An Orphan Account is an account that exists in a target system but is no longer properly linked to an active, governed identity.
Definition
An Orphan Account is a user or service account that remains present in a target system without a valid, current association to a known and governed identity in the IAM platform. Orphan accounts often arise from failed deprovisioning, legacy migrations, manual account creation, correlation errors, acquisitions, or weak joiner-mover-leaver controls. Because they frequently escape standard governance processes, orphan accounts represent a significant security and audit concern. Identifying and remediating them typically requires reconciliation, ownership investigation, and policy-driven cleanup decisions.
Why it matters
Orphan Accounts are a classic source of residual access risk because they often remain active outside normal governance visibility.
The Ariovis perspective
Ariovis promotes automation that remains explainable and recoverable: explicit rules, approvals where needed, logs, error handling and recovery mechanisms.
Related services
Common pitfalls
- A common mistake is detecting orphan accounts but postponing remediation indefinitely because ownership and business impact are unclear.
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