Also known as access creep, it refers to the slow accumulation of unnecessary permissions, access rights, and outright privileges by individual users. This can happen when, for example, an employee is tasked to work on a short-term project wherein they need an additional permission to an application.  If this happens often to many employees, privileges can become overextended over time, and it can pose a risk to organizations if too many permissions become extended to too many users. It’s the gradual pace at which these permissions become extended that gives this phenomenon its ‘creep’ moniker.