An increasing number of recent incidents have exposed a chronic vulnerability in corporate security: the identities that are not employees.
These aren't edge cases—these are remote logins by consultants, shared data environments viewed by partners, and vendors accessing through APIs or support portals. A majority of companies rely on these relationships to operate. But in doing so, they are essentially providing deep access to users outside of standard security procedures.
Supply chain attacks increasingly target this blind spot. In the majority of attacks, the attacker never has to penetrate the primary target. It's faster, easier, and much less traceable to just penetrate a vendor with access credentials.
Once a stolen vendor account is in an attacker’s hands, it can be used to access valuable systems without triggering immediate suspicion.
The 2025 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report discovered that third-party involvement in breaches has doubled, going from 15% to 30% in just a year. This means nearly one out of three breaches can originate from outside the organization.
Vendor access risk is no longer hypothetical. It's a reality.
In this blog, learn how non-employee identity risks can be reduced through increased visibility, more robust access controls, and third-party identity management specifically designed for this purpose. The goal is to give your business a real-world template for securing non-employee identities without the added hassle.
Attackers are usually able to bypass locked-down employee systems by pursuing third parties instead. These non-employees often have fewer security controls imposed, but their accounts can still directly feed into vulnerable internal systems.
A VPN-enabled contractor. An admin-enabled vendor in a cloud tenant. A partner with integration credentials. These are common—and commonly overlooked—points of compromise.
Oracle Cloud was hacked in March 2025, impacting over 140,000 customer accounts. The attackers took advantage of a third-party identity management component that exposed sensitive tokens and login credentials.
Just weeks later, Adidas revealed another supply chain attack. One of its third-party customer support vendors was breached and customer contact details were stolen. No payment data was compromised, but the attack demonstrated how third-party service providers can be an unsuspecting security risk.
In each case, the attackers did not need to breach the core. They attacked through the vendors.
As businesses go digital and expand, identities—non-employee and otherwise—proliferate exponentially. More partners. More contractors. More machine accounts. Each a new potential attack vector.
Most supply chain attacks begin with credential theft or abuse of an existing external account.
Once inside, attackers can move across systems, grant more privileges, or exfiltrate data quietly in the background. Because the identity is "authorized," it may not even raise any red flags at the beginning.
As your supply chain becomes more integrated, the chance that your internal systems are exposed to security threats from external users also increases. A breached vendor can open hundreds, if not thousands, of downstream systems if left unguarded.
Some issues make non-employee accounts harder to protect:
• Limited visibility: Most firms lack an up-to-date catalog of their external users. They often can't tell who has access, what they can reach, or why they still require it.
• Ad-hoc onboarding: Contractors and suppliers are often added informally, without fulfilling the standard identity verification procedures or background checks.
• Orphaned accounts: Temporary employees and partners leave, but their credentials remain active—often indefinitely.
• Shared credentials: Suppliers will frequently employ shared logins between teams or individuals, making it virtually impossible to assign accountability and audit trails.
These vulnerabilities allow attackers to remain undetected, especially if they compromise a non-employee account that no one is actively watching over.
Third-party user security should be considered differently from that of employees. The relationships are more fluid. The risks aren’t centralized. And the lifecycle is typically desynchronized from standard onboarding. Automation, strong policies, and least privilege access are key to mitigating third-party identity risks and reducing oversight gaps.
Every non-employee identity should begin at the minimum level of access they require. No full admin access. No general system access. Access must align with the user's role, project scope, and time window.
Least privilege is not just a best practice, it's also a containment strategy. The less a third-party user has access to, the less damage a breach relating to it can cause.
Each non-employee must have an internal sponsor—someone to be responsible for verifying access needs, tracking usage, and deactivating their account when the time comes.
Without ownership, external accounts fall through the cracks and can easily accumulate unnecessary privileges over time.
As refined as they may be, manual processes still allow too much room for human error. Automating the identity lifecycle ensures consistency in:
• Access requests
• Policy approvals
• Time-limited access expiration
• Contract end date notification
This keeps orphaned accounts from being created and keeps vendor access from being delayed.
Third-party access procedures must be distinct from employee procedures. Procedures must cover:
• Minimum security controls for vendors
• Identity verification and authentication standards
• Frequency of access review
• Audit trails for privileged action
Security policies must then address the diversity of non-employee relationships, where some may last for years, while others may only exist for a specific project.
Restrict access not only to job function, but to systems, data types, and the time periods needed. For example, a marketer executing a marketing campaign would not need access to customer databases or financial infattaormation.
Context-aware controls allow your business to apply more granularity in cases where blanket controls might otherwise affect productivity and slow things down.
Principles are only as effective as the systems that enable them. Most organizations try to apply their current IAM technology for vendors and partners, only to realize that these traditional platforms don't cut it.
• Tied to employee hierarchies
• Bound to internal HR systems
• Limited support for distributed ownership
• Limited project-based access models
Scaling third-party risk management means organizations must have a purpose-built identity governance solution. Learn more about why IAM systems struggle with non-employee identities.
The following features combined will help third-party access to evolve from manual to manageable—from exception-based to policy-driven:
The right governance platform supports groups across the organization. Those who successfully manage the non-employee identity lifecycle often do so through automation, clear ownership, and enforceable access governance.
With the shift to a third-party identity management platform, organizations finally have an institutional mechanism for managing complexity. Access is now traceable, auditable, and enforceable at every stage of the vendor lifecycle.
Even with effective onboarding and access controls, risk still lurks unless actively monitored. Third-party identities must be constantly monitored to confirm they're being used properly—and only as needed.
You can't secure what you can’t see.
Most third-party breaches go unnoticed for weeks or even months. Why? Because the compromised accounts typically appear legitimate. The login seems familiar. The activity appears to be normal—until it's not.
To catch these threats before they progress, organizations need to keep a close watch on external identity behavior, including (but not limited to):
• Unusual login times and locations
• Heavy data transfers
• Access to systems outside the user's role
• Stale or shared credential use
These activities may not always trigger alarms in traditional IAM systems. But they're potential signals for account abuse.
A third-party identity governance dashboard that's separate from operational IAM uses allows teams to have immediate visibility into:
• What active access vendors have
• What systems they can access
• When last accessed by their access
• Who and when approved it
Dashboards make the transition from reactive to proactive identity management easier. Dashboards also allow for faster decisions—e.g., to disable an account or escalate a review.
Audit trails aren't just for regulatory compliance. They're required for accountability. All actions concerning a third-party identity—login, permission change, file access—need to be logged and attributed to an individual user.
Routine vendor access audits verify permissions remain up to date with business needs. They also expose stale accounts or overlooked risks before they can be exploited.
Visibility is not optional. It's the foundation of trust in any large-scale identity system.
Regardless of how good your monitoring is, there is no system that's perfect. That's why containment measures matter. If a third-party account sahas been improperly used, your goal now shifts away from prevention and towards limiting what the attacker can do.
Containment starts with limiting the scope of access in the first place.
Third-party identity compromises were discovered to cost 11.8% more and take 12.8% longer to contain than attacks by insiders, as concluded in recent industry findings. Delays in detection times make it possible for attackers to gain expanded privileges and do more damage.
Decreasing their footprint to begin with can lower the impact considerably.
• Contextual access restrictions: Give access only if certain conditions are met (device health, geolocation, time of day, etc.).
• Scoped credentials: Connect credentials to specific applications or projects—not general systems.
• Just-in-time access: Grant temporary access that automatically terminates after a task or session is complete.
• Automated revocation: Remove access instantly when risk thresholds are breached or inactivity is identified.
• Multi-factor authentication: Make the use of verification methods mandatory for all non-employee identities.
These safeguards aren't just protecting systems, they give the attacker a shorter timeframe and restrict what they can see even if they break in.
Supply chain threat containment is not all about better walls. It's about creating smarter, smaller doors—and knowing when to shut them close.
The following checklist can be used to assess your organization's level of readiness. Gaps in any one area may be small. But attackers only need one door to be left unlocked.
Third-party identities introduce unique challenges that traditional IAM tools weren’t designed to solve. From onboarding and ownership to monitoring and offboarding, non-employee access requires a dedicated governance approach.
Anomalix helps organizations gain control over vendor and contractor identities with the idGenius platform for non-employee identity governance.
Need help securing non-employee access? Contact us at info@anomalix.com to learn how we can support your third-party identity strategy.
