Imagine this: A new engineer joins on Monday. By the time they sit down, they already have access to every tool they need: Slack, GitHub, your cloud infrastructure, everything.
Two months later, they resign. Within minutes of HR processing their departure, all access is revoked automatically. No tickets. No manual cleanup. No risk.
That's the promise of SCIM (System for Cross-domain Identity Management): seamless, automated identity lifecycle management that handles user provisioning, access updates, and deprovisioning across every application.
But here's the reality of SaaS identity management today: IT teams spend hours manually provisioning users for the apps that aren't connected to core identity systems, such as legacy apps, social media tools, and on-premises systems. They don't support SCIM or lack user management APIs. In these systems, former employees retain access for days or weeks after departure.
Why? Because SCIM isn't everywhere, and realistically, it won't be anytime soon.
What is SCIM and why does it matter for identity management?
SCIM (System for Cross-domain Identity Management) is an open standard protocol that automates user provisioning and deprovisioning across cloud applications. It enables identity providers like Okta, Microsoft Entra ID, and Ping Identity to automatically create, update, and remove user accounts in connected applications, eliminating manual identity lifecycle management and reducing security risks from orphaned access.
Why SCIM adoption lags for identity management
If an app doesn't support SCIM, it's rarely because the vendor hasn't heard of it. Technical complexity and business incentives play a huge role.
Identity infrastructure requires specialized expertise
Building SCIM isn't like adding a feature; it's like building an identity platform within your product. Most SaaS companies excel at their core domain (marketing automation, project management, analytics), not enterprise identity management. They're being asked to implement standards that identity providers spend years perfecting.
SCIM may look straightforward on paper, but every customer environment is different. Enterprise customers expect SCIM to work seamlessly with their IdPs but each has their own interpretation of the spec, attribute mapping requirements, and edge cases.
Why not just build APIs?
Some vendors offer proprietary user management APIs as an alternative, but these create fragmentation. Each API is unique, requiring custom integrations, ongoing maintenance as endpoints change, and specialized expertise. For IT teams, building and maintaining dozens of custom API integrations is impractical. SCIM exists precisely to standardize what APIs leave fragmented.
The business case often falls short
Even when engineering teams can build it, the ROI often doesn't justify the investment:
- Small and midsize customers handle provisioning manually, so missing SCIM rarely costs deals
- Many vendors make SCIM enterprise-tier only to justify premium pricing
- SCIM is invisible to end users and absent from product demos; it loses prioritization to features that visibly drive adoption
- A feature affecting 5-10% of customers (enterprise tier) competes poorly against features that impact everyone
The result
SCIM requires significant engineering effort and specialized expertise while offering little visible value to most users, so it consistently loses prioritization to features that drive adoption or differentiate the product. Until that changes, universal SCIM adoption isn’t coming anytime soon.
The customer cost: What happens when SCIM is missing
The consequences are very real for customers. Every disconnected app creates a gap in your identity fabric introducing security risk, operational drag, and compliance challenges.
Security: The dangerous gap between change and action
SCIM propagates identity changes instantly. Without it, manual provisioning creates dangerous delays. Consider what happens during offboarding: IT manually processes access revocation across 40+ applications.
But what about that social media management tool? The marketing automation platform? The analytics dashboard they had direct login credentials for?
According to Cerby’s 2025 Identity Automation Gap Report, 58% of organizations say former employees have retained access to systems after departure, largely due to apps without SCIM or API-based automation.
Manual deprovisioning means former employees will keep access to these disconnected apps, sometimes for days, sometimes for weeks.
Compliance: From manual exercises to continuous evidence
SCIM-enabled apps integrate with your IdP and IGA solution, creating continuous audit trails and automated access certifications. Disconnected apps offer neither.
SOC 2, ISO 27001, and GDPR require controlled access with complete audit trails. With SCIM, every identity change is automatically logged with timestamps, approvals, and access details. Access certifications route automatically to managers for review.
Without SCIM or APIs, both audit trails and access certifications break down:
- Audit trails become incomplete. You have no centralized record of when users were provisioned, who approved their access, or when it was revoked. Evidence collection means manually logging into disconnected apps, exporting user lists, and reconstructing timelines from spreadsheets and screenshots.
- Access certifications become manual exercises. Instead of automated reviews, you're emailing application owners asking "who has access?" and waiting for spreadsheets. Then manually cross-referencing against current employees, tracking down approvals, and hoping nothing was missed.
As long as critical apps remain disconnected, compliance remains a manual, error-prone, and a time-consuming operation, increasing both audit risk and the likelihood that unauthorized access goes undetected.
Efficiency and consistency at scale
SCIM enables automated user provisioning and keeps identity data consistent, but only where it's supported.
If provisioning a user across a stack of disconnected apps takes 30 minutes, and you onboard 10 people per month, that's 5 hours of IT time. Add role changes, department moves, and offboarding, and you're looking at days of manual work monthly.
Meanwhile, identity data drifts. Your IdP becomes a "source of truth" in name only while downstream apps have stale roles, outdated attributes, and orphaned accounts.
The path forward: Identity automation beyond SCIM
Here's the challenge: Every organization needs consistent identity automation. The barriers outlined above mean universal SCIM adoption is years away. But you can't wait years. The security risks exist today. Compliance requirements are immediate. Operational inefficiency compounds with every new hire.
Extending identity lifecycle management to every disconnected app
This is where platforms like Cerby bridge the gap.
Cerby extends lifecycle management, identity governance, and secure access control to disconnected apps, those without SCIM, user management APIs, or federation. Social media platforms with no enterprise IAM features, marketing tools with shared logins, legacy systems that will never adopt standards, and long-tail SaaS apps spread across the business.
With Cerby, you move from manual, reactive identity maintenance to automated user management with policy-driven control that includes your disconnected apps, enabling:
- Real-time provisioning and deprovisioning across your entire app landscape
- Centralized governance that extends to every tool where identities exist
- Continuous compliance through automated access reviews and audit trails
- Operational efficiency by eliminating manual credential management
The result? Identity policy finally matches identity execution, everywhere users have access, not just where standards exist.
Ready to close your identity gaps? See how Cerby works!