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Entra ID Governance vs Manual Access Reviews: Cost & Effort Breakdown

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Entra ID Governance vs Manual Access Reviews: Cost & Effort Breakdown

Cloud Architecture Expert Co-founder & CTO of Gart

July 10, 2026

Entra ID Governance vs Manual Access Reviews

Every enterprise running Microsoft 365 eventually asks the same question: do we keep certifying access with spreadsheets and email chains, or do we finally turn on Entra ID governance access reviews? The honest answer is more specific than “automate everything.” Most organizations are already paying for a meaningful chunk of Entra ID Governance inside licenses they hold today — they just haven’t switched it on. This breakdown puts real numbers next to both paths: the labor hours and error rates behind manual access reviews, what Entra ID’s P1/P2/Governance tiers actually cost and include, and where the effort genuinely goes when you move from one to the other. If you’re building the business case for your own rollout, Gart’s security audit team runs this exact cost/effort analysis before recommending a licensing change, not after.

The comparison below isn’t manual reviews versus a shiny new product. For most Microsoft 365 E5 customers, it’s manual reviews versus activating identity governance access reviews already sitting inside a license line they’re already paying for — and only reaching for the standalone Entra ID Governance add-on once that owned capability runs out of road.

Why Access Reviews Are Suddenly a Boardroom Topic

Access reviews used to be a quarterly checkbox for the identity team. They aren’t anymore. Every excess entitlement sitting on an account is a reachable attack path, and the numbers behind that risk have gotten hard to ignore: IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report 2025 found that malicious-insider incidents — the category most directly tied to over-permissioned or stale accounts — carry the highest average cost of any breach type, at $4.92 million per incident, well above the $4.44 million global average. When a credential is compromised, attackers don’t need to be sophisticated; they need the account to still have access it should have lost months earlier.

At the same time, the compliance side of the equation has gotten stricter. SOX, GLBA, ISO 27001, and — for organizations in scope — NIS2 all expect documented, recurring evidence that access to sensitive systems is actively recertified, not just granted once and forgotten. A pile of approved spreadsheets from last quarter doesn’t hold up well under audit scrutiny if nobody can explain why a given approval was granted.

⚠️ The real question isn’t “manual or automated”
For Microsoft-centric enterprises, it’s usually “manual, or the identity governance capability you’re already paying for inside Microsoft 365 E5.” That distinction changes the entire cost conversation, and it’s the one most vendor comparisons skip.

What Entra ID Governance Access Reviews Actually Do

Microsoft defines access reviews as a way to efficiently manage group memberships, access to enterprise applications, and privileged role assignments on a recurring basis, so that only the people who still need access keep it — see Microsoft’s official access reviews overview for the full feature reference. In practice, that means a named reviewer — a manager, a resource owner, or the requester themselves — periodically confirms or revokes continued access to a specific group, application, or privileged role, with the decision, timestamp, and justification captured automatically as audit evidence.

Entra ID governance access reviews sit at the intersection of three Microsoft Entra licensing tiers, and which capabilities you get depends entirely on which tier a given user is licensed under. P1 handles conditional access, self-service password reset, and hybrid identity, with no access review capability on its own. P2 is the tier that actually matters for this comparison — it adds risk-based identity protection, Privileged Identity Management (PIM), and access reviews on groups, enterprise applications, and privileged roles. Entra ID Governance is a separate paid layer on top of P2 that adds entitlement management (access packages, approval workflows), automated lifecycle workflows for joiners/movers/leavers, and AI-assisted recommendations that flag stale or anomalous access during a review.

That licensing structure is the whole story of why a straight “manual vs. Entra ID Governance” comparison is misleading for most enterprises — the middle tier, P2, already includes real access review capability, and a lot of organizations own it without using it. More on that below.

The Real Cost of Manual Access Reviews

“Manual” access reviews usually means a spreadsheet or CSV export sent to dozens of managers, each expected to look through a flat list of usernames and entitlements with no context on login frequency, role peers, or how the access was originally granted. Under deadline pressure, the natural response is to approve everything — the rubber-stamp review that satisfies an audit checkbox without actually reducing risk.

Industry benchmark data from identity governance vendor BalkanID’s analysis of enterprise access review deployments puts real numbers on that gap, modeled on a representative 10,000-user, 200-application organization running a quarterly review cycle:

Metric	Manual review cycle	Automated review cycle
Completion time	4-8 weeks per cycle	3-5 days
Total effort	1,200-1,800 FTE hours	Under 200 FTE hours
Reviewer effort per 100 users	~12 hours	~1 hour
Human error rate	8-12% mis-classified or incomplete	Under 2%
Audit exceptions per cycle	2-3	0-1, with full traceability
Annual review cost	$150K-$250K	$30K-$50K
Revocation time after a “reject” decision	5-10 days	Under 24 hours

The Real Cost of Manual Access Reviews

The completion-rate gap matters as much as the labor cost. Where automated, evidence-backed reviews routinely reach 98% genuine completion, manual processes tend to cap out around 60% real completion — the rest is technically “done” in the sense that a manager clicked approve, without anyone actually verifying the access was still needed.

What Entra ID Governance Costs — And the Licensing Trap Most Enterprises Fall Into

Here’s where the cost/effort math gets more interesting than a simple per-seat price tag. Entra ID P1 ships inside Microsoft 365 E3 and Business Premium; Entra ID P2 — the tier that includes access reviews, PIM, and risk-based protection — ships inside Microsoft 365 E5. Entra ID Governance is priced as a separate standalone add-on layered on top of P2, adding entitlement management and lifecycle automation that P2 alone doesn’t cover.

That structure creates a specific, well-documented overspend pattern. Independent licensing analysis from Redress Compliance’s Entra ID Pricing Buyer Guide, based on roughly 25-35 Microsoft identity licensing engagements reviewed in 2024-2025, found three recurring patterns:

Double payment. Standalone Entra P1 or P2 seats overlapped with entitlements already included in E3 or E5 on 15-25% of reviewed users — organizations were paying twice for identity capability their existing suite already granted.
Unused capability. P2 capabilities such as access reviews and Privileged Identity Management sat switched off on 40-60% of E5 estates that already owned them — the single largest finding in the engagement.
Governance bought too early. In roughly a third of cases, organizations purchased the standalone Entra ID Governance add-on while the P2 access reviews and PIM controls that ship inside their existing E5 license were never even activated.

The practical takeaway: before treating Entra ID Governance as a new purchase, most Microsoft-centric enterprises should confirm whether they’re already licensed for P2 through E5 — and if so, whether access reviews are actually turned on. For many organizations, the highest-leverage first move costs nothing beyond configuration time: activate the group, application, and privileged-role access reviews already included in the license, prove the coverage gap that remains, and only then scope Governance for the specific entitlement-management or lifecycle-automation capability P2 genuinely doesn’t provide.

Cost/Effort Comparison: Manual vs. Unused P2 vs. Activated P2 vs. Governance

Put the labor-hour data and the licensing reality side by side, and the decision looks less like “buy software” and more like a four-stage maturity path most enterprises should walk in order:

Stage	New license cost	Where the effort goes	What you get
1. Manual reviews	None — but 1,200-1,800 FTE hours/cycle	Reviewer time, chasing approvals, compiling audit evidence by hand	~60% real completion; 20-25% of high-risk entitlements missed
2. P2 owned, unused	None — already inside your E5 license	Zero — this is the risk state most E5 estates are actually in	Nothing; you’re paying for a control that isn’t running
3. P2 activated	None beyond existing E5	Configuration: defining review scope, cadence, reviewers, recommendations	Access reviews on groups, apps & privileged roles; automated audit trail
4. Entra ID Governance	Standalone add-on, scoped to need	Deploying entitlement management, access packages, lifecycle workflows	Self-service access requests, joiner/mover/leaver automation, AI recommendations

Cost/Effort Comparison: Manual vs. Unused P2 vs. Activated P2 vs. Governance

Notice that the biggest jump in outcome — from a rubber-stamp manual cycle to a defensible, evidence-backed review — happens between Stage 1 and Stage 3, and Stage 3 doesn’t require a new purchase for most E5 organizations. Stage 4 is a real and often justified investment, but it solves a different problem: self-service entitlement requests and lifecycle automation, not the base act of reviewing who has access to what.

Where the Risk Hides: What Manual Reviews Miss

A flat list of usernames and permissions gives a reviewer no context on whether access is still justified. Without that context, the same categories of risky access slip through review after review:

Dormant accounts with no login activity in 90+ days that still hold live entitlements.
Privilege creep — users who changed roles internally but kept access tied to their previous position, the exact failure mode Gart’s least-privilege access model playbook is built to prevent.
Orphaned service accounts with no clear HR or business owner to confirm they’re still needed.
Toxic access combinations, such as a single account holding both “create” and “approve” permissions in a financial system.

None of these show up cleanly in a spreadsheet — see Gart’s step-by-step breakdown of how to run a user access review without spreadsheets for the process that catches them. They show up in identity governance tooling that correlates login telemetry, role peers, and ownership lineage — exactly the context P2 access reviews and Governance’s AI-assisted recommendations are built to surface automatically instead of leaving it to a manager’s memory.

🔍 An access review is only as good as its evidenceA completed review that can’t show why an approval was made — no login history, no peer comparison, no justification — provides audit comfort without actually reducing risk. Gart’s infrastructure audit engagements routinely find this gap: reviews that are technically “done” but functionally unverifiable.

A Phased Rollout From Manual Reviews to Entra ID Governance

The lowest-risk path from spreadsheets to a mature Entra ID governance access reviews program doesn’t require a big-bang re-platform. It looks more like this:

Inventory what you already own. Cross-reference standalone Entra seats against E3/E5 entitlements to confirm you’re not double-paying, and identify exactly which users are licensed for P2.
Activate P2 access reviews on the highest-risk scope first. Start with privileged roles (via PIM) and access to your most sensitive applications, not the entire directory at once.
Define reviewers and cadence deliberately. Resource owners, not IT generically, should review access to the resources they actually understand — quarterly is the right default cadence for anything compliance-sensitive, though see why quarterly access reviews commonly fail and how to fix it before assuming cadence alone solves the completion-rate problem.
Feed in identity telemetry from a properly configured Entra ID tenant so reviewers see login frequency and role context, not just a name and a permission.
Scope Governance only against the gap P2 doesn’t cover — typically self-service access requests and joiner/mover/leaver automation — once the activated P2 reviews prove where that gap actually is.

This is also where integrating access governance into CI/CD and infrastructure-as-code pipelines pays off for engineering-heavy organizations: access reviews shouldn’t stop at directory groups when service accounts and pipeline credentials often carry more standing privilege than any individual employee.

When Manual Reviews Still Make Sense

Automation isn’t the right call for every organization on day one. Manual, spreadsheet-based reviews remain reasonable when the organization is small enough — well under a few hundred identities — that the 1,200-1,800 hour benchmark above doesn’t apply at meaningful scale, when there’s no Microsoft 365 E5 or standalone P2 licensing in place yet and the immediate need is a one-time compliance evidence gap rather than an ongoing program, or when access sprawl is genuinely limited: few applications, few privileged roles, low employee turnover.

Even then, the moment audit findings start citing SOX, ISO 27001, or NIS2-adjacent obligations — see Gart’s breakdown of why ISO 27001 certification matters for growing companies and how NIS2 compliance obligations reach organizations through their infrastructure and hosting relationships — the completion-rate and evidence gaps in manual reviews become a documented finding, not just an internal inefficiency.

Roman Burdiuzha

Co-founder & CTO, Gart Solutions · Cloud Architecture Expert

Roman has 15+ years of experience in DevOps and cloud architecture, with prior leadership roles at SoftServe and lifecell Ukraine. He co-founded Gart Solutions, where he leads cloud transformation and infrastructure modernization engagements across Europe and North America. In one recent client engagement, Gart reduced infrastructure waste by 38% through consolidating idle resources and introducing usage-aware automation. Read more on Startup Weekly.

FAQ

What are Entra ID governance access reviews?

Entra ID governance access reviews are a Microsoft Entra ID P2 and Governance capability that lets organizations periodically recertify who has access to groups, enterprise applications, and privileged roles. A designated reviewer — typically a manager or resource owner — confirms or revokes continued access on a defined schedule, with the decision, timestamp, and justification captured automatically as audit evidence.

Why do manual access reviews fail at scale?

Manual access reviews fail at scale because reviewers receive flat lists of usernames and entitlements with no context on login activity, role peers, or how access was originally granted. Under deadline pressure, most reviewers approve everything to meet a compliance date rather than actually verify access — industry benchmark data shows manual reviews miss 20-25% of high-risk entitlements on average and cap out around 60% genuine completion versus 98% for automated reviews.

How much does Entra ID Governance cost?

Entra ID Governance is priced as a standalone add-on on top of Entra ID P2, which itself ships inside Microsoft 365 E5. Because many organizations already hold E5, and therefore already own P2 access reviews and Privileged Identity Management, the real near-term cost for most enterprises is configuration effort to activate those owned controls — not new license spend. Independent licensing analysis found that P2 access reviews sit unused on 40-60% of E5 estates that already pay for them, and Governance is frequently purchased before those owned controls are even switched on.

How often should access reviews run?

Quarterly is the standard cadence for access to compliance-sensitive systems, with privileged roles and highly sensitive applications sometimes reviewed monthly. The right frequency depends on regulatory requirements (SOX, ISO 27001, NIS2-adjacent obligations) and how quickly the organization's access landscape changes — high-turnover environments need tighter cycles than stable, low-turnover teams.

Who should own access reviews — IT, security, or compliance?

Access reviews work best when the actual resource owner — the manager or application owner who understands why someone needs access — performs the review, not a generic IT or compliance team reviewing unfamiliar entitlements. IT and identity teams typically own the platform, cadence, and audit evidence; compliance defines the regulatory requirements; but the review decision itself should sit with whoever can genuinely judge whether the access is still justified.

When should a company move from manual reviews to Entra ID Governance?

The trigger is usually scale or audit exposure: once an organization has enough identities, applications, and privileged roles that manual reviews are consistently landing in the 1,200+ hour range per cycle, or once an audit finding cites unverifiable or incomplete access certification, it's time to activate owned P2 access reviews first and evaluate standalone Governance for the entitlement-management and lifecycle-automation gaps that remain.

How does Gart Solutions help with Entra ID governance and access reviews?

Gart Solutions runs a licensing and access-review audit that maps what an organization's Microsoft 365 E3/E5 estate already includes, activates owned Entra ID P2 access reviews and PIM controls, and scopes Entra ID Governance only for the specific entitlement-management or lifecycle-automation gaps that remain — avoiding the double-payment and premature-purchase patterns common across enterprise Entra ID deployments.

IT Infrastructure

Least Privilege Access Model: A Practical Playbook for Lean IT Teams

Roman Burdiuzha

July 10, 2026

Most breaches don't start with a zero-day. They start with an account that had more access than it needed — a contractor's laptop with admin rights to production, a CI runner that reaches every environment, a former employee's SSO login nobody revoked. A least privilege access model — where every user, service account, and application gets only the permissions required for its job, and nothing more — is the single most effective control for shrinking that exposure. Contrary to what most vendor pitches imply, it does not require a dedicated identity and access management (IAM) team to implement. This is where lean IT teams tend to talk themselves out of it: least privilege sounds like an enterprise program with role catalogs and a governance committee. In reality it's a discipline you can start this week — and for a five-person IT team, it matters more than for an enterprise with a security operations center, because there's no one else watching the door. If you want an outside view of where your access sprawl already stands, a focused security audit will usually surface the worst offenders within days. This guide covers what the model means, why it's disproportionately valuable for small teams, and a practical six-step rollout playbook. What Is the Least Privilege Access Model? The least privilege access model is a security approach in which every identity — human or machine — is granted the minimum set of permissions necessary to perform its function, for the minimum amount of time necessary, and nothing more. A support engineer who only ever needs to restart a service should not also be able to modify billing settings. A reporting dashboard that reads sales data should not have write access to the database it queries. A deploy bot that pushes to staging should not, by default, also be able to reach production. It is not a single tool or setting — it is a standard you apply consistently across identity providers, cloud accounts, servers, CI/CD pipelines, SaaS applications, and databases. The CISA Zero Trust Maturity Model places least privilege at the center of its Identity pillar precisely because it depends on knowing who — or what — is asking for access before you can decide what "minimum necessary" means for them. In practice, that makes the least privilege access model the operational backbone of any zero-trust initiative rather than a separate checkbox next to it. Least privilege vs. zero trust, in one line: zero trust says "verify every request, trust nothing by default." Least privilege says "and once verified, grant only what's needed, only for as long as it's needed." One is the philosophy; the other is the permission-sizing rule that makes it enforceable. Why the Least Privilege Access Model Matters More for Lean IT Teams Larger organizations have a security operations center watching for anomalous access at 2 a.m. Lean IT teams usually don't — which means the access model itself has to do the work that headcount would otherwise cover. Three dynamics make this especially acute for small and mid-sized IT functions: Everyone tends to be over-permissioned by default. When one or two admins run the entire stack, the fastest path to "get it working" is to grant broad access once and move on. That shortcut compounds: eighteen months later, half the team has standing admin rights they used once during onboarding and never again. The blast radius is proportionally larger. In a five-person IT team, a single compromised credential can plausibly touch every system the company runs. Credential abuse remains the throughline attackers rely on most: Verizon's 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report found credential abuse present in roughly 39% of breach chains overall, even as it recedes as the initial entry point in favor of exploited vulnerabilities — meaning that once an attacker is in, an over-permissioned account is very often how they move and escalate. There's no separate governance layer to catch drift. A small IT infrastructure for a growing business rarely has a dedicated compliance or GRC function reviewing access on a schedule — which is exactly the condition under which permission sprawl accumulates silently, one "just give them access for now" exception at a time. Core Principles of a Least Privilege Access Model A working least privilege access model rests on five principles. They reinforce each other — skipping one tends to quietly undermine the rest: Default deny. New accounts, roles, and service identities start with zero access. Permissions are added deliberately, not removed after the fact from an overly generous starting point. Just enough access (JEA). Permissions map to a specific task or job function at the narrowest useful scope — a namespace, not a cluster; a bucket, not the whole account. Just-in-time (JIT) elevation. Standing privileged access is replaced with time-bound elevation requested for a specific task and automatically revoked when the window closes. Separation of duties. No single identity can both perform and approve the same sensitive action — the person who can request a change is not the same one who can authorize it in production. Continuous review, not one-time setup. Access is treated as something that decays in accuracy over time as roles change, and is re-validated on a recurring schedule rather than configured once and forgotten. NIST codifies this last point directly: least privilege is a named control family (AC-6) in NIST SP 800-53, which explicitly requires organizations to review assigned privileges on a defined schedule — not just at account creation. A Practical 6-Step Rollout Playbook for Lean IT Teams You do not need to boil the ocean. The playbook below is sequenced so each step produces a usable result on its own, rather than requiring the whole program to be finished before anything improves. Inventory every identity and what it can actually reach. Pull a current list of human users, service accounts, and API keys across your identity provider, cloud accounts, and CI/CD tooling. Most cloud providers' native entitlement tools (AWS IAM Access Analyzer, Azure AD Access Reviews, GCP Policy Analyzer) will show you effective — not just assigned — permissions, which is usually where the surprises are. Flag standing admin and "god mode" accounts first. Rank identities by blast radius, not by how often they're used. A rarely-touched service account with org-wide admin rights is a higher priority fix than a frequently-used account scoped to one application. Map roles to the minimum permission set, not the current one. For each job function, define what it genuinely needs — not what's convenient to grant. This is where a lightweight RBAC structure earns its keep; if any part of your stack runs CI/CD pipelines, our guide to role-based access control in CI/CD pipelines covers the tool-by-tool setup in depth. Replace standing elevated access with just-in-time elevation. For the handful of tasks that genuinely need temporary admin rights — an incident, a one-off migration, a schema change — use time-bound elevation (native cloud PIM tools or a lightweight PAM solution) instead of leaving the access open indefinitely. Codify the result so it doesn't drift back. Manually configured permissions erode the moment someone makes a console change under time pressure. Defining roles and policy bindings in Terraform or your platform's native IaC tooling — the same approach covered in our Infrastructure as Code best practices guide — means access changes go through the same review process as everything else you ship. Put a recurring review on the calendar — and mean it. Quarterly is the realistic minimum. For a lean team, the review does not need to be exhaustive every cycle: focus on privileged accounts, service accounts, and anyone who changed roles or left since the last pass. Least Privilege Across Your Stack Least privilege looks different at each layer of your environment. Here's where lean teams most commonly over-grant access, and the fix that actually holds up: LayerCommon Over-Privilege MistakeLeast-Privilege FixCloud IAMBroad managed policies (e.g. full AdministratorAccess) attached to individual users instead of scoped rolesCustom, resource-scoped policies per role; enable IAM Access Analyzer / Policy Analyzer to flag unused permissionsIdentity Provider / SSOOne flat "employee" group granting access to every connected appApp-specific groups mapped to job function; conditional access rules by device and locationServers & EndpointsShared local admin credentials used for routine maintenanceNamed, individually audited accounts; local admin rights removed by default and granted just-in-timeCI/CD & DevOps ToolingA single CI service account with access to every environment and secretEnvironment-scoped service accounts and protected variables, with production gated by required approvalsDatabasesApplication connection strings using a superuser or db_owner roleRead/write roles scoped to specific schemas; separate credentials for reporting vs. transactional accessSaaS ApplicationsEvery new hire defaulted to "Admin" because it's the fastest way to unblock themRole templates per department; admin roles limited to a named, reviewed short listLeast Privilege Across Your Stack Tools That Make This Achievable Without a Dedicated IAM Team The reason least privilege has historically felt out of reach for small teams is that manual role design and manual reviews genuinely don't scale past a handful of people. The good news is that most of that work is now automatable with tools a lean team can run without hiring a specialist: Native cloud entitlement analyzers (AWS IAM Access Analyzer, Azure AD Privileged Identity Management, GCP Policy Analyzer and Recommender) are included in your existing cloud subscription and will directly flag unused permissions and suggest tighter policies — this is usually the fastest first win, and it's free. Just-in-time / PAM tooling — whether a purpose-built privileged access management product or your cloud provider's native temporary-elevation feature (AWS IAM Roles Anywhere with short-lived STS credentials, Azure PIM, HashiCorp Vault dynamic secrets) — replaces standing admin rights with request-and-expire workflows that a lean team can configure once and then leave running. Infrastructure as Code turns your role definitions into version-controlled, peer-reviewed artifacts instead of console clicks nobody remembers making six months later — which also happens to be the single best way to pass an audit for SOC 2 compliance or similar frameworks, since access-control evidence becomes a diffable file rather than a screenshot. If your team is stretched too thin to run even this lighter-weight version of the program, an outside infrastructure consulting engagement can stand up the role structure and automation once, then hand it back to your team to maintain — which is usually far cheaper than the alternative of hiring a full-time IAM engineer for a problem that, once codified, mostly runs itself. Common Pitfalls (and Warning Signs) When Lean Teams Implement Least Privilege The model is simple in concept; teams still trip on the same handful of things in practice. The most common failure mode is treating least privilege as a one-time cleanup project rather than an ongoing discipline — permissions granted "temporarily" during an incident are the single biggest source of drift, because nobody owns removing them once the fire is out. A close second is scoping roles so tightly that people start requesting exceptions constantly, which trains the team to rubber-stamp access requests to keep the business moving — defeating the purpose. The fix is to size roles against real task frequency, not theoretical minimalism, and to make the just-in-time request path fast enough that nobody is tempted to bypass it. A recent IT infrastructure audit is the fastest way to find out which of these you're already dealing with before you commit to a rollout plan. If any of the following look familiar, privilege sprawl is already further along than it appears: Nobody can produce a current list of who has admin rights to production without manually checking each system. Service accounts and API keys outnumber human users and haven't been reviewed since they were created. "Just give them admin, it's faster" is a phrase your team says at least once a month. Not sure how over-permissioned your environment already is? Gart Solutions helps lean IT and engineering teams design and roll out a least privilege access model — from identity and cloud IAM audits to IaC-codified roles, just-in-time access, and the ongoing review cadence to keep it that way. 10+ Years in DevOps & Cloud 50+ Enterprise clients secured 4.9★ Clutch rating IT Security Audit Identity & Access Management Zero Trust Implementation DevSecOps Infrastructure as Code Talk to a Security Expert → Roman Burdiuzha Co-founder & CTO, Gart Solutions · Cloud Architecture Expert Roman has 15+ years of experience in DevOps and cloud architecture, with prior leadership roles at SoftServe and lifecell Ukraine. He co-founded Gart Solutions, where he leads cloud transformation and infrastructure modernization engagements across Europe and North America. In one recent client engagement, Gart reduced infrastructure waste by 38% through consolidating idle resources and introducing usage-aware automation. Read more on Startup Weekly. You might also like How to Run a User Access Review Without Spreadsheets ISO 27001 vs. SOC 2: Which Access Controls Do You Actually Need? Exploring the Benefits of IT Infrastructure Outsourcing Top 30 Managed IT Service Providers for SMBs & Mid-Market Businesses Gart Compliance Audit Services

IT Infrastructure

How to Run a User Access Review Without Spreadsheets

Roman Burdiuzha

July 10, 2026

Every audit season, the same file resurfaces: a bloated spreadsheet with one tab per system, colored cells for "approved," and a manager who hasn't opened it since the last audit. Learning how to run a user access review without spreadsheets isn't about finding a fancier template — it's about replacing a process that was never designed to scale past a handful of systems and a few dozen employees. If you're the one chasing down sign-offs every quarter, or the one explaining to an auditor why three ex-employees still show "active" in a system nobody remembers to check, Gart's compliance audit team sees this exact bottleneck across almost every engagement — and it's fixable without buying an enterprise IGA platform on day one. This guide walks through why spreadsheet-based reviews break down, what a modern access review process looks like instead, how often to run one by risk tier, and where to draw the line between what should be automated and what still needs a human decision. Result: hours per cycle, reviewers only see what changed, audit trail is a byproduct — not a scramble.The spreadsheet version isn't just slower — it's stale the moment it's filed. The automated version keeps its own audit trail as a side effect of running. What a User Access Review Actually Checks A user access review is the process of confirming, system by system and person by person, that everyone's current access still matches their current job — no more, no less. In practice that means pulling every account, role, and permission across your critical systems, matching each one against the person's actual responsibilities today (not the responsibilities they had when the access was granted), and making an explicit decision for every entry: keep it, downgrade it, or revoke it. The review exists to catch three specific failure modes that accumulate quietly in any growing organization: privilege creep (employees who change roles but keep accumulating old permissions instead of shedding them), orphaned accounts (access left active after someone leaves or a contractor's engagement ends), and excess standing access (admin-level permissions granted for a one-time task and never revoked). None of these show up as an incident on their own — they're the precondition that turns a single stolen password into a much larger breach, which is exactly why Verizon's 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report puts the number of corporate users reusing an already-exposed password at roughly four in ten — access reviews are one of the few controls that catch the damage before that reused password becomes a working credential inside your systems. Why Spreadsheet-Based Access Reviews Break Down Spreadsheets aren't a bad tool for a five-person startup with three SaaS logins. They become a liability at a very specific, predictable point: once the number of systems, users, and role changes exceeds what one person can manually cross-reference inside a review window. Past that point, the same problems show up in almost every organization we audit: 📉 The review becomes a snapshot of last quarter, not this oneExporting access into a spreadsheet freezes it at the moment of export. Every role change, offboarding, or new hire that happens during the two-to-four weeks it takes to collect sign-offs is invisible to the review — which means the "completed" review is already out of date before anyone files it. Beyond staleness, three more issues compound: there's no single source of truth once the file is emailed to five different managers, each keeping their own copy; there's no reliable evidence trail showing who actually reviewed which row and when, which is precisely what a security audit or SOC 2 assessor asks to see; and reviewers default to rubber-stamping "approve all" on long lists because reading 400 rows of raw permission names with no context about actual usage is not a task a manager can realistically do well in the fifteen minutes they've allotted for it. How to Run a User Access Review Without Spreadsheets: Step by Step Removing the spreadsheet doesn't require ripping out your entire identity stack on day one. It means restructuring the process so data collection, routing, and evidence capture happen automatically, and the only manual step left is the actual judgment call a human has to make anyway. Inventory every system that holds an access decision. Start with a real list — cloud consoles, source control, CI/CD, databases, SaaS admin panels, VPN, and any internal tooling with role-based permissions. Most organizations underestimate this list by half; shadow SaaS and forgotten admin panels are where stale access hides longest. Pull entitlement data directly from each system's API or SSO provider, not a manual export. Most identity providers (Okta, Entra ID, Google Workspace) and major cloud platforms expose an API or a native access-review feature that reads current group membership and role assignments in real time, eliminating the export-then-email step entirely. Route each access decision to the person who actually knows the answer. A centralized IT team rarely knows whether a specific engineer still needs production database access — their manager or the system owner does. Automated routing sends each reviewer only the entitlements they're actually qualified to judge, instead of one giant undifferentiated list. Surface usage data alongside each entitlement, not just the permission name. "Has write access to the billing database" is hard to judge in isolation. "Has write access to the billing database, last used 214 days ago" makes the decision almost automatic — this single change is what turns a rubber-stamp exercise into a real review. Auto-approve birthright access, and only surface exceptions and changes since the last cycle. If someone's access was already reviewed and hasn't changed, re-certifying it from scratch every quarter is wasted reviewer attention. Mature programs certify only what's new, changed, or flagged as anomalous — role outliers, separation-of-duties conflicts, dormant accounts, and access that doesn't match the person's department. Capture the decision, the reviewer, and the timestamp automatically, in the same system. This is the evidence an auditor asks for — not a policy document saying reviews happen, but a record of the specific decision made on a specific entitlement by a specific person on a specific date. Execute revocations immediately, and verify they took effect. A "revoke" decision that sits in a spreadsheet for two weeks before IT actions it is functionally the same as no decision at all. Closing the loop — confirming the access was actually removed — is the step most manual processes skip. None of these steps require a full identity governance platform to start. Many teams begin with scripts against their SSO provider's API and a lightweight workflow tool, then graduate to a dedicated access-review or IGA product once the entitlement volume justifies it. What matters is removing the manual export-email-chase cycle, not which specific tool replaces it — Gart's infrastructure audit engagements typically start by mapping exactly this: which systems can already feed a review automatically, and which still need the plumbing built. How Often to Review Access, by Risk Tier Review frequency isn't one-size-fits-all, and treating every system on the same quarterly calendar wastes reviewer attention on low-risk access while under-reviewing the accounts that matter most. Risk-based cadence is also what most frameworks actually expect once you read past the headline "periodic review" language in NIST SP 800-53's AC-2 account management control, which leaves the exact interval to the organization's own risk determination rather than mandating a fixed number. Access tierRecommended cadenceTypical spreadsheet failure modePrivileged / admin (root, domain admin, production DB write)Monthly, or continuous with automated flagsAdmin lists go stale fastest; a single missed cycle can leave standing root access unreviewed for a full quarterStandard business systems (CRM, finance tools, internal apps)QuarterlyLargest row count, most likely to get "approve all" treatment under time pressureService accounts & API keysQuarterly, with automated dormancy alertsNo human owner to chase for sign-off, so these are the rows most often skipped entirelyLow-risk / read-only (internal wikis, reporting dashboards)Semi-annual to annualRarely the actual risk, but often consumes disproportionate review time on a flat spreadsheet What to Automate vs. What Still Needs a Human Removing spreadsheets doesn't mean removing judgment — it means reserving human attention for the decisions that actually need it, and letting the process handle everything else. A well-built review workflow should automate: Data collection and formatting. Pulling current entitlements from every system and normalizing them into one reviewable list — the part spreadsheets require someone to do by hand every single cycle. Routing and reminders. Sending each entitlement to the correct reviewer automatically and escalating overdue items, rather than one person manually emailing and re-emailing managers. Evidence capture. Logging who decided what, and when, in a format an auditor can query directly instead of a screenshot of a spreadsheet tab. Anomaly flagging. Surfacing separation-of-duties conflicts, dormant accounts, and role outliers automatically, so reviewers spend their time on the entries that are actually unusual. What should stay human: the actual certify-or-revoke decision on any entitlement flagged as an exception, sign-off from the system owner who understands business context a script can't infer, and the judgment call on ambiguous cases — a contractor whose engagement was extended verbally but not yet in the HR system, for example. Automation should narrow what a human has to look at, not replace the look itself. How Access Reviews Map to SOC 2, ISO 27001, and NIS2 Every major security framework requires some form of periodic access review — the specific language differs, but auditors are checking for the same underlying evidence: a documented, repeatable process with named reviewers, dated decisions, and proof that revocations were actually executed. Microsoft's Entra ID Governance documentation frames this well as confirming that "the right people have the right access to the right resources" on an ongoing basis — a vendor-neutral definition that maps cleanly onto every framework below, regardless of which tooling actually runs the review. FrameworkWhat it expects from access reviewsSOC 2Trust Services Criteria CC6.1-CC6.3 require restricting logical access to authorized personnel and demonstrating periodic review of that access, with evidence of both the review and any resulting removalsISO/IEC 27001Annex A access control clauses require documented, periodic review of user access rights, tied to the organization's own risk assessment rather than a fixed universal intervalNIS2 (EU)Requires access control and identity management as part of baseline cyber-hygiene measures for in-scope entities, typically implemented by mapping to ISO 27001/27002 controls — see Gart's NIS2 compliance overview for how this applies beyond obviously regulated sectorsPCI DSS / HIPAABoth mandate documented periodic review of user access to cardholder data or protected health information, typically at minimum every six months for standard access and more frequently for privileged accounts The consistent thread across every framework: a policy stating that access reviews happen is not evidence. Auditors ask for the actual review — reviewer name, date, decision, and the resulting action — which is exactly what a spreadsheet struggles to preserve reliably across cycles and what an automated process generates as a natural byproduct of running. Where Access Review Projects Go Wrong Most failed access-review programs don't fail because a tool was missing — they fail on process and ownership problems that a new platform alone won't fix: No clear owner per system. If it's unclear whose job it is to review a given system's access, the review either doesn't happen or defaults to IT rubber-stamping decisions they don't have the business context to make. Reviewing everything with equal weight. Treating a read-only wiki account the same as a production database admin role burns reviewer attention on low-risk items and increases the odds that high-risk access gets the same fifteen-second glance. Automating collection but not remediation. Some teams automate the data pull and routing, then let "revoke" decisions sit in a ticket queue for weeks. The review only reduces risk once the access is actually removed and that removal is verified. Treating the review as a compliance checkbox rather than a security control. Programs built purely to satisfy an auditor tend to under-invest in the parts — usage data, anomaly flags — that make the review actually catch something. Gart's SOC 2 preparation guide covers this distinction in more depth: passing the audit and reducing real access risk are related but not identical goals. Access Governance & Compliance Audit Still running access reviews out of a spreadsheet? Gart Solutions audits your current access review process, maps every system that needs to feed it, and designs the automated workflow — API-driven entitlement collection, risk-based routing, and audit-ready evidence capture — so your next SOC 2, ISO 27001, or NIS2 review is a formality instead of a fire drill. IT Audit Services Compliance Audit Security Audit Infrastructure Audit DevSecOps Consulting IT Infrastructure Consulting Talk to an audit specialist Explore our IT audit services → Roman Burdiuzha Co-founder & CTO, Gart Solutions · Cloud Architecture Expert Roman has 15+ years of experience in DevOps and cloud architecture, with prior leadership roles at SoftServe and lifecell Ukraine. He co-founded Gart Solutions, where he leads cloud transformation and infrastructure modernization engagements across Europe and North America. In one recent client engagement, Gart reduced infrastructure waste by 38% through consolidating idle resources and introducing usage-aware automation. Read more on Startup Weekly.

Cloud

DevOps

IT Infrastructure

Cloud Migration Project Plan: Step-by-Step Strategy for a Secure & Scalable Transition

Roman Burdiuzha

April 17, 2026

A cloud migration project plan is the backbone of every successful migration. Without it, teams face scope creep, unplanned downtime, and blown budgets. This guide walks you through Gart Solutions' proven methodology — the same framework we use to migrate production workloads to AWS and Azure with zero downtime. What Is a Cloud Migration Project Plan? A cloud migration project plan is a structured document — and living process — that defines how an organization moves its workloads, applications, databases, and infrastructure from on-premises or legacy environments to a cloud platform (such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud). It specifies the scope, migration strategy, phased timeline, team responsibilities, risk register, success criteria, and post-migration operating model. Unlike a one-page "migration checklist," a proper project plan aligns stakeholders, engineering teams, and security leads before a single server is touched. It answers three critical questions: What are we migrating and in what order? How will we migrate each workload (strategy per application)? When will each phase complete and what defines success? Why Your Cloud Migration Needs a Formal Project Plan Cloud migrations consistently rank among the most complex IT projects an organization undertakes. According to McKinsey, companies that fail to plan properly spend 2–3× more time in post-migration cleanup than in the migration itself. Here is what a formal cloud migration project plan prevents: Unplanned downtime — Without a cutover plan and rollback procedure, production outages become likely. Security gaps — Misconfigured IAM roles and open S3 buckets are the #1 cause of cloud data breaches. Cost overruns — Right-sizing decisions made during assessment save 25–40% on compute bills. Scope creep — Undiscovered dependencies derail timelines when not mapped upfront. Compliance failures — GDPR, HIPAA, and SOC 2 requirements must be addressed before data moves. The 6 Rs of Cloud Migration Strategy Before building your cloud migration project plan, every workload needs a migration strategy. Gartner's "6 Rs" framework is the industry standard: StrategyAlso Known AsDescriptionBest ForRehostLift & ShiftMove applications as-is to the cloud with no code changesLegacy apps, quick wins, tight deadlinesReplatformLift, Tinker & ShiftMinor optimizations without changing core architecture (e.g., move to managed RDS)Apps benefiting from managed servicesRefactorRe-architectRe-design to use cloud-native capabilities (microservices, serverless)Core business apps needing scalabilityRepurchaseDrop & ShopReplace with a SaaS product (e.g., move CRM to Salesforce)COTS apps with SaaS equivalentsRetireDecommissionIdentify and shut down apps that are no longer neededRedundant or unused workloadsRetainRevisitKeep on-premises for now (compliance, latency, or dependency reasons)Apps not yet ready for cloudThe 6 Rs of Cloud Migration Strategy At Gart Solutions, our discovery phase assigns one of these strategies to every workload in your environment before a migration plan is finalized. This prevents "lift-and-shift regret" — where teams move everything to the cloud only to find costs higher than on-premises. Gart Solutions' Cloud Migration Project Plan: 3-Phase Methodology Our cloud migration project plan is built around a three-phase framework refined across 50+ enterprise migrations to AWS and Azure. Each phase has defined deliverables, acceptance criteria, and a clear handoff point. Here is how it works: Phase 1 Discovery & Architecture Design ⏱ Duration: 2–4 weeks 👷 Lead: Cloud Architect 🕐 Effort: 30–40 hours No migration should begin without a thorough discovery. In Phase 1, our cloud architects perform a full assessment of your existing environment — mapping every server, database, application dependency, and network configuration. Deliverables from Phase 1: Cloud Readiness Assessment Report (infrastructure inventory + scoring) Application dependency map (visualizing all inter-service connections) 6R strategy assignment per workload Target AWS / Azure architecture design with security framework Migration wave plan (prioritized sequence of workloads) TCO analysis: on-premises cost vs. projected cloud cost Risk register with severity ratings Compliance checklist (GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2 as applicable) Tools used: AWS Migration Hub, Azure Migrate, Cloudamize, Nmap, custom Terraform scripts for environment scanning. Phase 2 Infrastructure Migration & Application Deployment ⏱ Duration: 6 weeks – 4 months 👷 Lead: DevOps Engineers 🕐 Effort: Variable by scope Phase 2 is the execution engine of your cloud migration project plan. Our DevOps engineers migrate workloads in prioritized batches — starting with non-critical systems and ending with mission-critical production services. Deliverables from Phase 2: Fully provisioned cloud infrastructure (IaC via Terraform / CloudFormation) CI/CD pipeline setup (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or AWS CodePipeline) Database migration with replication validation Network configuration: VPC, subnets, security groups, firewall rules IAM roles, policies, and least-privilege access controls PWA/container deployment (Docker / Kubernetes / ECS / AKS) Rollback procedures documented and tested Migration Completion Report per wave Tools used: Terraform, Ansible, AWS DMS, Azure Database Migration Service, Docker, Kubernetes, ArgoCD, HashiCorp Vault. Phase 3 Monitoring, Alerting & Cost Optimization ⏱ Duration: 2–4 weeks 👷 Lead: SRE / DevOps 🕐 Effort: 20–30 hours setup Migration is not complete when workloads are running in the cloud. Phase 3 establishes the operational foundation — observability stack, alerting rules, and cost governance. Deliverables from Phase 3: Centralized monitoring dashboards (Grafana + Prometheus) Alerting rules for latency, error rates, and thresholds Incident runbooks for top-10 failure scenarios Cost optimization report: reserved instances, right-sizing Security posture review (AWS Security Hub) Tagging strategy and FinOps governance setup 30-day post-migration hypercare support Tools used: Grafana, Prometheus, CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, AWS Cost Explorer, Datadog, PagerDuty. Cloud Migration Project Plan: Real Timeline Example Below is a representative timeline from a Gart Solutions engagement — migrating a mid-size SaaS platform from a self-managed bare-metal environment to AWS. The client had 12 services, a PostgreSQL database cluster, and a strict requirement for zero downtime during the production cutover. WeekPhaseKey ActivitiesMilestoneWeek 1–2DiscoveryInfrastructure inventory, dependency mapping, stakeholder interviewsReadiness Assessment deliveredWeek 3DiscoveryAWS architecture design, security framework, TCO analysisArchitecture design approvedWeek 4DiscoveryMigration wave plan finalized, rollback procedures documentedMigration plan sign-offWeek 5–6MigrationIaC provisioning (Terraform), networking, IAM, CI/CD setupCloud foundation readyWeek 7–9MigrationWave 1: Non-critical services migrated and validatedWave 1 complete — 4 of 12 services liveWeek 10–13MigrationWave 2: Core application services + database replication setupWave 2 complete — 10 of 12 services liveWeek 14MigrationWave 3: Production cutover — blue/green switch, DNS updateFull production on AWS ✓Week 15–16OptimizationMonitoring setup, alerting rules, cost optimization passOperational dashboards liveWeek 17–20Hypercare30-day support, incident response, reserved instance purchasingProject closure report deliveredCloud Migration Project Plan: Real Timeline Example Note: Timeline varies by environment complexity. Migrations of 3–5 services can complete in 6–8 weeks; large enterprises with 50+ services may require 6–9 months across multiple waves. Common Cloud Migration Risks & Mitigation Strategies Every cloud migration project plan must include a risk register. Below are the most common risks our team encounters — and how we mitigate each. RiskSeverityLikelihoodMitigation StrategyUndiscovered dependenciesHighVery CommonAutomated dependency mapping in Phase 1 using network traffic analysis and application topology toolsData loss during migrationHighLow (with planning)Pre-migration full backups, live replication during cutover, checksum validation post-migrationExtended downtimeHighMediumBlue-green deployments, DNS TTL pre-reduction, rollback procedure tested before cutoverCloud cost overrunMediumCommonRight-sizing analysis in assessment, budget alerts, reserved instances post-migrationSecurity misconfigurationHighCommonSecurity-by-design architecture review, automated policy enforcement (AWS Config / Azure Policy)Performance degradationMediumMediumLoad testing in staging environment before wave promotion, auto-scaling configurationCompliance violationsHighLow (with planning)Compliance review in Phase 1, data residency controls, encryption at rest and in transit enforcedTeam knowledge gapsMediumCommonRunbooks, knowledge transfer sessions, hypercare period with Gart supportCommon Cloud Migration Risks & Mitigation Strategies Cloud Migration Project Plan Checklist Use this checklist to validate your cloud migration project plan is complete before execution begins: Pre-Migration (Assessment & Planning) Full infrastructure inventory completed (servers, databases, storage, network) Application dependency map created and validated with application owners Migration strategy (6R) assigned per workload Target cloud architecture documented and approved by security team TCO analysis and cloud cost model completed Compliance requirements identified (GDPR, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, SOC 2) Risk register created with mitigation owners assigned Migration wave plan prioritized (non-critical → critical) Rollback procedures documented for each wave Stakeholder communication plan in place During Migration (Execution) Cloud foundation provisioned via Infrastructure as Code (Terraform / CloudFormation) IAM roles and policies follow least-privilege principle Network configuration validated (VPC, subnets, security groups, peering) CI/CD pipeline operational before first workload migrated Database replication running and lag monitored before cutover Non-critical workloads migrated and validated before production waves Load testing performed on each wave in staging DNS TTL reduced 48 hours before cutover Rollback tested in staging environment Cutover executed during lowest-traffic window Post-Migration (Validation & Optimization) All services validated against acceptance criteria Monitoring dashboards configured and alerting tested Incident runbooks written and distributed to on-call team Cost optimization review completed (right-sizing, savings plans) Security posture review completed (no public buckets, encryption enforced) Old on-premises infrastructure decommissioned (after stability period) Migration Closure Report delivered with lessons learned AWS vs. Azure: Choosing the Right Platform for Your Migration Your cloud migration project plan must specify the target platform early — the architecture design, tooling, and cost model differ significantly between providers. DimensionAWSMicrosoft AzureMarket positionLargest cloud provider (~31% market share)Second largest (~25% market share)Best forStartups, SaaS, cloud-native workloadsEnterprises with Microsoft stack (AD, Office 365, .NET)Migration toolingAWS Migration Hub, AWS DMS, Server Migration ServiceAzure Migrate, Azure Database Migration ServiceDatabase servicesRDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, RedshiftAzure SQL, Cosmos DB, Azure Database for PostgreSQLKubernetesAmazon EKSAzure Kubernetes Service (AKS)Compliance certifications143+ security standards100+ compliance offerings, strong in EU/GDPRPricing modelPay-as-you-go + Savings Plans + Reserved InstancesPay-as-you-go + Reserved + Azure Hybrid BenefitGart experiencePrimary platform — 40+ migrationsStrong expertise — Azure + hybrid scenariosAWS vs. Azure: Choosing the Right Platform for Your Migration Our recommendation: For most SaaS and product companies starting from scratch on cloud, AWS offers the richest ecosystem. For enterprises already invested in Microsoft 365, Active Directory, or running .NET workloads, Azure delivers smoother integration and potentially lower licensing costs through the Azure Hybrid Benefit. What Should Be in a Cloud Migration Proposal? If you're asking a cloud partner to submit a formal proposal, or building one internally to gain executive approval, the document should include these core sections: Executive Summary — Business case, projected ROI, and timeline at a glance Current State Assessment — Infrastructure inventory, pain points, costs Proposed Cloud Architecture — Target state diagram with service selections Migration Strategy — 6R assignments per workload with rationale Project Plan & Timeline — Phased wave plan with Gantt or milestone view Team & RACI Matrix — Who owns what across client and partner teams Security & Compliance Framework — How regulatory requirements are addressed Risk Register — Top risks, severity, probability, and mitigation actions Cost Estimate — One-time migration cost + projected monthly cloud spend Success Criteria — Measurable KPIs defining project completion Gart Solutions provides a free downloadable Cloud Migration Proposal Template covering all of these sections — built from our real-world engagement format. How Much Does a Cloud Migration Project Cost? Cost is one of the most common questions during cloud migration planning. The honest answer: it depends heavily on scope, complexity, and migration strategy. Here are the primary cost drivers: Cost ComponentDescriptionTypical RangeDiscovery & AssessmentCloud architect time, tooling, report production$3,000 – $15,000Infrastructure MigrationDevOps engineering, IaC build, database migration$15,000 – $120,000+Application RefactoringCode changes for cloud-native optimization (if refactor strategy)Varies by codebaseTraining & Knowledge TransferTeam enablement on new cloud environment$2,000 – $10,000Post-Migration Cloud SpendMonthly cloud infrastructure costs (highly variable)Optimized with right-sizingHow Much Does a Cloud Migration Project Cost? The ROI timeline for most cloud migrations is 12–24 months. Key savings come from eliminating hardware refresh cycles, reducing datacenter footprint, and leveraging managed services that eliminate operational overhead. 💡 Pro Insight from Gart Solutions' Engineers The single biggest mistake we see in failed migrations is treating the cloud like a new datacenter. The clients who get the most value from cloud migration are those who use Phase 1 to rethink their architecture — not just lift-and-shift it. Even small refactoring decisions during migration (like moving to managed databases or container-based deployments) can reduce operational overhead by 40–60% in the first year post-migration. Strategic Architecture Group @ Gart Solutions Building Your Cloud Migration Project Plan: Next Steps A successful cloud migration starts long before any server is moved. The organizations that migrate successfully — on time, within budget, and without production incidents — share one thing in common: they invested in a thorough cloud migration project plan before writing a single line of Terraform. Gart Solutions has guided more than 50 companies through this process. Our methodology is designed to eliminate the surprises that derail migrations: hidden dependencies, security misconfigurations, cost overruns, and production outages. Every engagement starts with the same question: What does your current environment really look like? — and we don't stop until we have a complete answer. Whether you're a startup preparing for your first cloud migration or an enterprise modernizing legacy infrastructure, we can help you build a plan that works — and execute it with precision. Cloud Solutions Ready to launch your infrastructure to the cloud? We provide high-precision migration strategies that ensure zero downtime and a 40% average cost reduction. Let’s scale your business with DevOps-driven architecture. Schedule a Free Audit Roman Burdiuzha Co-founder & CTO, Gart Solutions · Cloud Architecture Expert Roman has 15+ years of experience in DevOps and cloud architecture, with prior leadership roles at SoftServe and lifecell Ukraine. He co-founded Gart Solutions, where he leads cloud transformation and infrastructure modernization engagements across Europe and North America. In one recent client engagement, Gart reduced infrastructure waste by 38% through consolidating idle resources and introducing usage-aware automation. Read more on Startup Weekly.

Why Access Reviews Are Suddenly a Boardroom Topic

What Entra ID Governance Access Reviews Actually Do

The Real Cost of Manual Access Reviews

What Entra ID Governance Costs — And the Licensing Trap Most Enterprises Fall Into

Cost/Effort Comparison: Manual vs. Unused P2 vs. Activated P2 vs. Governance

Where the Risk Hides: What Manual Reviews Miss

A Phased Rollout From Manual Reviews to Entra ID Governance

When Manual Reviews Still Make Sense

Not sure whether you’re already paying for the access reviews you need?

Roman Burdiuzha

FAQ

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