How policy-driven authorization can alleviate authorization debt

The pace at which authorization debt grows is increasing exponentially. Policy-driven authorization can help address the risks.

David Brossard   ·   Wednesday, April 8th, 2026   ·   Reading Time: 4 minutes

As application development continues to accelerate especially with the advent of agentic coding tools, long-standing cybersecurity challenges are becoming more glaring. As illustrated by the OWASP Top Ten 2025, the most recent list, the number one challenge is still Broken Access Control. In other words, authorization debt, a term used to describe the issues that arise when each team uses their own approach to formulate access control checks. The core problems of authorization debt include:

• a build-up of authorization silos,
• poor visibility,
• inefficient user management,
• conflicting access control logic, and
• heavy remediation costs.

The pace at which authorization debt grows is increasing exponentially with the number of users, data, services, and integrations.

Policy-driven authorization can alleviate these challenges by:

1. Creating a single decision point for consistency and visibility,
2. Eliminating the security risks with siloed authorization, and
3. Providing reusable building blocks to reduce development time.

The approach we suggest through policy-driven authorization is in-line with NIST Zero Trust 800-207. Our long-term vision is to provide consistent access control through human-readable policies across the entire IT landscape from operating systems to AI processes.

Authorization debt: An overview

Most teams build security their own way, if at all. This happens because most teams focus on completing their own tasks as quickly as possible and may not have factored security concerns.. More often than not, developers are not thinking about the authorization challenges or risks that may pose a threat to the company. When developers do think about authorization challenges, they may take the easy route by hardcoding logic into the application leading to static and brittle security with poor visibility, auditability, and oversight.

When multiple teams do this independently, it leads to authorization in silos as each application is tackling authorization in a different way, at their own pace, and without any collaboration between teams.

Authorization debt through mergers and acquisitions

Authorization debt also occurs when companies are acquired and merged over time, resulting in a collection of products that were created using different authorization models and languages under the same company. While those decisions may have made sense individually, once the company wants to package these products together into one suite, inconsistencies will start to occur. This is similar to a corollary challenge: identity silos.

The risks and challenges of authorization debt

Authorization debt can introduce operational and security challenges, including:

• Poor visibility: When there are multiple approaches and silos, it can be difficult to understand what the intent was and what the actual effect is, leading to gaps and unproductive resolutions without a central visibility point.
• Inefficient & conflicting entitlement management: With silos, we need to leverage IGA processes to their fullest to try and manage the plethora of entitlements that stem from each silo. However, these entitlements may be conflicting and hard to understand.
• High resource demand: Burying access rules in code slows development and drains time,  energy, and money from building the application, leaving less resources to complete project deadlines.
• Zero Trust blocked: Inconsistent and fragmented access controls prevent the maturity of any modern Zero Trust strategy.

Authorization debt and policy-driven authorization

In order to achieve a Zero Trust approach, organizations must provide developers with a clear set of reusable, building blocks that support continuous identity verification, consistent enforcement, and auditability across applications. Educating developers on how to leverage these building blocks is critical to successfully implementing Zero Trust principles.

These building blocks help eliminate the issue of fragmented access controls in different applications. They can provide a means of:

• Identity and user management
• Authentication
• APIs and API gateway exposure
• Authorization

By using these building blocks, it’ll enable enterprises to apply the same development patterns across all applications that are being developed. Even if products are written in different languages, the building blocks will continue to provide all the same frameworks and approaches for defining authorization and identity. This approach will help alleviate the visibility issues, allowing for everyone in the enterprise to understand how access is being enforced no matter what is being developed.

In addition to improving enterprise-wide visibility and security, standardized  building blocks significantly improve the developer experience. Rather than repeatedly implementing identity and authorization logic themselves, developers can rely on these shared frameworks to meet organizational standards. This allows developers to spend less time writing security code and more time delivering features, enabling them to finish their work faster and more efficiently.

Where do I start?

If you’re a developer, ask your organization to provide viable, developer-friendly tools that can serve as building blocks for the authorization needs inside your applications. If you’re part of the identity and access management (IAM) or security team, provide building blocks to help developers build applications with a centralized authorization framework.

Turn to industry and standards bodies. For instance, NIST defines NIST ABAC 800-162 and NIST Zero Trust 800-207 that both provide a blueprint for a successful externalized authorization architecture following the PEP-PDP architecture model. OWASP defines several top ten threats:

• OWASP Top Ten 2025 lists broken access control as the number #1
• OWASP API Top Ten 2023: API1: 2023 – Broken Object Level Authorization
• OWASP Top 10 for Agentic Applications for 2026: ASI03: Identity and Privilege Abuse
• OWASP Top 10 for MCP: MCP07:2025 – Insufficient Authentication & Authorization and MCP02:2025 – Privilege Escalation via Scope Creep

OpenID AuthZEN defines a new standards-based approach to externalizing authorization via the PEP-PDP approach as mandated by NIST. With AuthZEN, you can mix and match your PEPs and PDPs, giving customers freedom and vendor independence. Axiomatics is a founding member and a co-chair of the OpenID AuthZEN Working Group.

Building secure applications, brick by brick

Think about building an application like building with Lego bricks. You want ready-made bricks and other elements like wheels, motors, and axles so you can build your dream Lego car with ease. And if your sibling wants to build a bus or even a house, they can… All with the same bricks, the same ease of integration (that satisfying clicking sound), and the same sturdiness. It’s the same with software development and supporting functions like authentication and authorization. Avoid reinventing the “Lego bricks” that have been built by supporting functions. Instead, use the Lego bricks that already exist for authentication, authorization, APIs, and related capabilities. Practicing this approach streamlines applications, decreases the risk for authorization debt, and allows teams to move faster by delivering functionality more efficiently.

A brighter future with Axiomatics

As organizations prioritize identity-first security, policy-driven authorization can help reduce authorization debt by providing consistent controls, audit trails, and central visibility into access. This approach not only addresses current IAM challenges but also establishes a strong foundation for future security innovations and resilience. And it aligns with NIST Zero Trust 800-207 practices.

If you’d like to learn more about policy-driven authorization, please reach out for a demo here.