You probably didn't think twice the last time you logged into your company's HR portal or clicked "accept" on a new workplace app. But behind that innocuous interface, dozens of third-party tools are quietly accessing your data—often without any good reason to do so.

A sweeping 12-month study published in January 2026 reveals that enterprise software has a serious third-party problem. And it's getting worse fast.

The Scale of Unnecessary Access

Reflectiz, a web security firm, spent a year analyzing 4,700 leading websites to understand how third-party applications behave in the wild. What they found should concern anyone who works with digital systems: 64% of third-party apps now access sensitive data without business justification.

That's up from 51% just one year earlier—a 25% jump that signals a troubling trend.

These aren't obscure tools from sketchy vendors. Google Tag Manager accounts for 8% of all unjustified data access violations. Shopify is responsible for 5%. Even Facebook Pixel, deployed on countless websites, was found capturing sensitive input fields it doesn't need for basic tracking.

The problem isn't necessarily malicious intent. It's something more mundane but equally dangerous: lazy configuration and inadequate oversight.

What "Unjustified Access" Actually Means

Not all data access is created equal. Reflectiz identified four red flags that indicate a third-party app is overstepping:

Irrelevant function. A chatbot that can see payment card fields has no legitimate reason to access that information. Yet these mismatches happen constantly.

Zero-ROI presence. Some apps sit dormant for 90+ days, transmitting nothing, yet retain full access to sensitive systems. They're digital squatters with keys to the vault.

Shadow deployment. Marketing teams use tag management systems to add new tools without IT approval. These apps bypass security reviews entirely.

Over-permissioning. Tools granted "Full DOM Access" can see everything on a page—passwords, credit cards, medical records—when they only need a fraction of that data.

The pattern is clear: organizations grant sensitive data access by default rather than by exception. It's the digital equivalent of giving every contractor in your building a master key.

Public Institutions Are Losing Ground

The study revealed a disturbing divide between well-funded and budget-constrained sectors.

Government websites saw malicious activity explode from 2% to 12.9%—more than a six-fold increase. Education sector compromises quadrupled to 14.3%, meaning one in seven education websites now shows signs of active breach.

Meanwhile, the insurance sector—better funded and more heavily regulated—reduced malicious activity by 60%, dropping to just 1.3%.

This isn't a technical problem. It's a resource problem. Public institutions lack the budget and personnel to properly vet, configure, and monitor the third-party tools they depend on. They're losing the supply chain battle not because they don't understand the risks, but because they can't afford to address them.

The Awareness-Action Gap

Here's the paradox: 81% of security leaders call web-based attacks a top priority. Yet only 39% have deployed solutions specifically designed to address them.

That 42-point gap between concern and action tells the real story. Most organizations know they're vulnerable. They just haven't done anything about it.

The obstacles are familiar: budget constraints (cited by 34%), regulatory compliance complexity (32%), and lack of manpower (31%). Meanwhile, 58% of organizations lack proper defenses. Some rely solely on general security tools like web application firewalls, which weren't designed for third-party risk. Others are still "evaluating" dedicated solutions while the problem accelerates.

How Third-Party Breaches Actually Happen

Third-party apps create an expanded attack surface. Each connection is a potential entry point.

When a single vendor gets compromised, attackers can inject malicious code that harvests credentials or skims payment information across every site using that tool. The 2023 MOVEit breach demonstrated this cascade effect perfectly—over 2,600 organizations and 77 million people were impacted as the breach spread through the extended vendor ecosystem.

According to Verizon's 2025 report, 30% of all breaches now involve third-party connections—double the previous year's figure. SecurityScorecard research found that 98% of organizations work with at least one vendor that's been breached in the last two years.

The math is brutal. You might have excellent internal security, but you're only as secure as your weakest vendor.

The Governance Gap

The root cause often traces back to organizational structure. Marketing and digital teams deploy third-party apps to move fast and track metrics. IT and security teams find out later—if at all.

This governance gap creates chronic misconfiguration. Apps get added through tag management systems without security review. Access permissions default to maximum rather than minimum. Nobody checks whether a tool deployed six months ago is still needed or even active.

Entertainment and online retail sectors show the highest rates of unjustified access. In these industries, marketing pressure to deploy tracking and optimization tools overrides security concerns. Speed trumps safety until something breaks.

What Actually Works

The insurance sector's 60% reduction in malicious activity offers a blueprint. Better-funded organizations with mature governance processes can stabilize their environments.

The key elements aren't mysterious: proper vendor vetting before deployment, minimal access permissions based on actual function, regular audits to remove stale or unnecessary tools, and clear ownership of third-party risk that bridges IT and business teams.

Gartner has coined the term "Web Exposure Management" to describe this emerging discipline. It recognizes that third-party apps—analytics tools, marketing pixels, CDNs, payment processors, chatbots—require dedicated security attention, not just general defenses.

The Human Element

Technology alone won't solve this. According to Verizon's 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report, 68% of breaches involve a human element: compromised credentials, misused identities, or access granted too broadly.

Third-party access amplifies these human vulnerabilities. Common problems include unverified onboarding processes, credential sharing within partner organizations, excessive access that never gets reviewed, and orphaned accounts that remain active long after partnerships end.

When a contractor leaves your vendor's company, does their access to your systems get revoked? Most organizations have no idea.

What Happens Next

The trend lines point in one direction: more third-party tools, more data access, more risk.

As the study's authors note, unjustified access is "accelerating into public infrastructure." Government and education sectors—the institutions we depend on for essential services—are showing the most dramatic increases in compromise.

The awareness-action gap needs to close. Security leaders already know this is a top priority. Now they need the budget, tools, and organizational support to actually address it.

For individual organizations, the path forward requires honest assessment. How many third-party tools do you actually use? Who approved them? What data can they access? When was the last time someone checked?

Those questions sound basic because they are. But most organizations can't answer them. And that's exactly the problem.

The next time you log into an enterprise system, remember: you're not just trusting that company. You're trusting every third-party vendor they've connected to your data. Whether those vendors deserve that trust is increasingly unclear.