How to run recurring access reviews across Microsoft 365 and AI tools
How to run owner-led access reviews on a fixed cadence across Microsoft 365 and the AI tools your teams use, so access stays aligned with need and you can prove it was reviewed.
An access review is the periodic, owner-led attestation that the people and tools with access to a resource still need it. Run recurringly across Microsoft 365 and the AI tools your teams use, it is how access stays aligned with need rather than accumulating quietly. The review confirms or revokes each grant on a fixed cadence and produces the evidence that access was checked, not just assumed.
Access is easy to grant and almost never removed. Projects end, people move teams, tools get wired to data for a one-off, and the grants stay. Over time the gap between who can reach a resource and who should widens into real risk, and now it spans AI tools as well as Microsoft 365.
Recurring access reviews close that gap on a schedule. The mechanics are simple; the discipline is making them owner-led, regular, and consequential. The steps below turn access review from an annual scramble into a routine that keeps standing access in check and leaves an evidence trail.
Steps
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Define the review scope
Decide which resources and grants are in scope, across Microsoft 365 workspaces and the AI tools and agents that reach company data, so the review covers where access risk actually lives.
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Assign reviewers to owners
Route each review to the resource or tool owner, not to a central IT queue. Owners know whether access is still needed; IT usually does not, and owner attestation is what makes the result defensible.
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Run on a fixed cadence
Schedule reviews to repeat, quarterly for most resources, more often for sensitive ones. A recurring cadence is what keeps access aligned as people and projects change.
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Act on the results
Revoke access that owners do not confirm, rather than letting unreviewed grants persist by default. A review that never removes anything is theatre.
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Retain the evidence
Keep a durable record of who reviewed what and when, so you can show access was checked over time, which is what DORA, NIS2, and internal audit ask for.
