Entitlement findings are the clearest case for contextual severity, because the thing that makes an over-permissive identity dangerous is not the policy document — it is where the identity can get to. Cloudanix scores identity findings by blast radius, cross-account reach, standing versus brokered access, and whether the permissions were ever used.
Every cloud account has hundreds of over-permissive identities. The question is never whether they exist — it is which five to fix this sprint.
Two identities can carry the same wildcard grant and represent completely different exposure. Severity that reads only the policy cannot tell them apart, so it ranks them identically.
Answering "what can this identity reach?" means walking assume-role edges, trust policies and network paths across accounts. A flat findings table cannot answer it — a graph can.
A permission that only exists for the ninety seconds a pipeline needs it is a different risk from the same permission sitting there permanently. JIT changes the risk, so it should change the severity.
The same model as every other surface, with one distinguishing trait: the signal that dominates here is a graph traversal rather than an attribute you can look up.
How far the identity reaches, whether a crown-jewel or regulated data store sits downstream, cross-account assumability, standing versus brokered access, and whether the permissions are used at all.
For each flagged identity, the platform walks outbound from the principal — assume-role edges, attached policies, live network paths — to establish what is actually reachable, and what classification those targets carry.
CIEM already compares granted against used permissions. A wide grant that has never been exercised is a cleanup task; the same grant in daily use against sensitive data is an incident waiting to happen.
Entitlement lists, IAM compliance scoring inputs, alerting and exports resolve one effective severity, so a remediation queue sorted by severity is finally sorted by consequence.
Every one of these is something Cloudanix already computes about your identities. What changes is that it starts driving the severity, so your remediation queue sorts by consequence.
How many assets, and of what classification, become reachable if this identity is compromised. The dominant factor for entitlement findings.
Whether a customer or regulated data store sits downstream of the identity. This is the factor that turns a cleanup item into a priority.
Whether the principal can traverse an account boundary. Lateral movement across accounts is how a contained incident becomes an uncontained one.
Whether the privilege is permanent or brokered just-in-time. An identity governed by JIT carries materially less standing risk.
Granted but never exercised. Still worth removing, rarely worth interrupting someone's Friday for.
Human, service account, pipeline principal or AI agent. Non-human identities outnumber humans by a wide margin and fail differently.
For a misconfiguration, context modifies the risk. For an entitlement, context essentially is the risk — which is why static severity performs worst here and why we want it on the rails.
Blast radius is not new work. It is the traversal that already powers attack paths, being read as a severity input instead of only as a separate view.
Putting an identity behind JIT should visibly lower its risk. When severity can move, remediation shows up in the number instead of only in a changelog.
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It is entitlement-finding severity decided by what the identity can actually reach, rather than fixed on the rule that flagged it. Blast radius, data reach, cross-account assumability and whether access is standing or brokered all move the severity — with the reasons attached. See the overview for the general model.
They supply the inputs. CIEM computes effective permissions, usage and blast radius; Attack Path establishes what an identity can actually reach. Contextual severity is what lets those inputs drive the severity itself, so your least-privilege queue sorts by consequence rather than by policy text.
By walking outbound from the principal through assume-role edges, attached and inherited policies and live network paths, to a configurable depth, and recording the classification and compliance scope of everything reachable. It is a graph traversal, not a lookup.
No. The finding stays open, stays in the least-privilege report and stays in compliance scope regardless of severity — the same guarantee that applies to posture findings. Severity governs urgency and alerting, never existence.
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