Access used to be simple. Now, it’s anything but.

A user isn’t just a user anymore. They’re a contractor, a team lead, a delegated admin, a temporary approver. A resource isn’t just a piece of data or a task - it’s part of how things get done, how teams collaborate, and the rules that keep everything running smoothly. With so many moving parts, access decisions are no longer straightforward - they depend on relationships, timing, exceptions and real-time context.

And access control? It’s struggling to keep up.

When access fails, everything feels it

Access control touches everything: user onboarding, workflow automation, external integrations, compliance reviews, support tooling. Yet most systems still treat it as an afterthought - hardcoded logic, brittle roles, scattered policies, and one-off exceptions.

What happens next is all too familiar:

• Product teams build the same access checks again and again.
• Security teams lose visibility into who has access to what, and why.
• Policy changes take weeks.
• Exceptions pile up.
• And users hit roadblocks - or worse, get access they shouldn't have.

It’s not just frustrating - it’s risky.

A study by Balbix found that 62% of organizations lack confidence in their security posture, largely due to poor visibility and control over access. Meanwhile, research from tenfold Security shows that over 70% of companies have experienced overprivileged access, where users retain permissions they no longer need - or should never have had.

These aren’t edge cases. They’re signs that traditional models are no longer keeping up with the pace and complexity of today’s environments. Because at its core, authorization isn’t just about deciding who gets access. It’s about enabling secure, dynamic, policy-aware interactions - without slowing teams down or losing control.

Modern access decisions are too complex for yesterday’s tools

Modern authorization demands more than roles and attributes. It requires answers to questions like:

• “Can this contractor access project data - but only during a specific engagement?”
• “Can this employee approve expenses, but only when their manager is out of office?”
• “Can this third-party system retrieve customer data - but only for users who’ve opted in under specific terms?”

These aren’t exceptions. They’re everyday realities - in SaaS, finance, healthcare, government - anywhere systems, people, and policies are in motion.

But legacy models like RBAC, ABAC, or hard-coded logic can’t handle that nuance. They don’t model relationships. They don’t capture delegation, conditional access, or evolving context.

So teams build workarounds - and those workarounds become risks.

Rethinking access starts with rethinking the model

Many organizations are starting to see the real problem. Their biggest access challenges aren’t just technical - they stem from a deeper misalignment. Traditional authorization models simply weren’t built for the pace, complexity and dynamic nature of modern business operations.

Instead of treating access as a static function or a disconnected policy engine, these organizations are reimagining it as something else entirely:
A dynamic, adaptive capability - one that understands the shifting relationships between people, data, and decisions. Across systems. Over time. In real-world context.

This shift leads to a clear insight: authorization should reflect how your business actually operates.

It’s not about rigid roles or fixed rules. It’s about building a model designed for relationships, intent, and constant change - across teams, systems, and moments in time.

That’s where traditional approaches fall short - and where graph-based authorization stands apart. Graphs capture the complexity of real-world access: who’s connected to what, under what conditions, and how those connections evolve. They model relationships natively, making it easier to express delegation, exceptions, time-bound access, and shifting context - without losing control.

Put simply: authorization is a graph problem - and it demands a graph-based solution.

Want to go deeper?

Access control is no longer just about enforcement - it’s about understanding. Who’s connected to what? Under what conditions? How does that change over time?

To dive deeper into how a graph-based approach can transform your access control model, check out the full report titled Patterns for Graph-based Authorization in Banking, co-authored by Alex Babeanu, a graph and IAM expert, and Dave Hyland, a leader in digital trust and security architecture.

While the report is framed through a banking lens, the patterns apply broadly - to anyone dealing with complexity, regulation, or scale.

→ Read the full report and rethink access from the ground up.