Cyber threats continue to move faster, operate smarter and hit harder than ever before. Against this backdrop, one truth has emerged: identity is the new perimeter – your people’s digital identities are the new front line of defense. And that brings identity into focus for every attacker. To truly protect your business, you need an AI-enabled, dynamic, intelligent, unified Identity Fabric to deliver next generation protection and control without impacting productivity.
Why AI is now essential to identity security
As businesses embrace hybrid infrastructure, connect legacy Operational Technology (OT) environments, and extend access across a growing user and device base, traditional identity and access management (IAM) tools are buckling under pressure. Static rules can’t keep pace. Manual governance slows everything down. Siloed tools create blind spots attackers are eager to exploit.
AI bridges these gaps
By analyzing vast amounts of identity and access data, AI delivers the speed, insight and guidance necessary to secure today’s complex environments. AI transforms your identity fabric from a static gatekeeper into a proactive, predictive defense mechanism.
Solving the limitations of AI in IAM
AI is the latest buzzword on the street, often with demonstrable value and impact. Therefore, it's critical to understand AI’s limitations.
If an AI solution has access to data, it can summarize or report on it – provided you know what to ask of it. But, knowing what to ask and interpreting those results – the critical thinking skills required in order to assess the need and develop an action plan - is still a uniquely human strength. This is a pivotal insight for IAM: AI needs human direction.
Identity Manager handles this intelligently:
It uses AI to analyze, surface insights, and recommend action, but leaves final decisions to human experts. Through machine learning and peer group analysis, it provides contextual suggestions for roles, access requests, reviews, and attestations – enhancing human decision-making, not replacing it.
Practical example: Using generative AI to unlock identity insights
At our most recent UNITE customer conference, we showcased an integration between Identity Manager and Azure OpenAI.
Through natural language queries inside Identity Manager’s web portal, users can pull deep insights from identity data – whether identifying risky entitlements, refining access policies or crafting complex SQL queries without writing a single line of code.
For example, a user could iteratively ask:
- “Show the top 10 users with the riskiest entitlements.”
- “Group users by department, title, and manager.”
- “Exclude 'Domain Users' from results.”
- “Ensure entitlement counts don't exceed group totals.”
The AI did the hard work in building complex queries and tables – while the user drove the inquiry, step-by-step.
This is AI in IAM done right: The heavy lifting is automated, but humans guide the strategy.
AI-powered use cases across your identity fabric
When applied intelligently, AI strengthens every part of the identity lifecycle:
- Risk-Based Access and Adaptive Authentication
AI dynamically adjusts authentication challenges based on behavior, location, and device health, ensuring security without burdening users. - Anomaly Detection Across IT and OT
Especially as OT systems (like SCADA, PLCs, ICS) connect to enterprise networks, AI detects risky behavior and delivers insight – even where traditional security tools can’t. - Enterprise-Scale Automation and Governance
AI automates identity governance workflows like access reviews and policy enforcement, making continuous compliance achievable and scalable. - Privileged Access Management for Unified Security
A unified identity security strategy across IT and OT integrates AI into PAM, IGA, and AD management, enabling context-aware access, real-time threat detection, and seamless governance across the board.
From fragmentation to unity: The One Identity advantage
Where once identity security was siloed – separated into fragments like Active Directory management, governance, and privileged access – the One Identity Fabric brings it all together, powered by AI:
- Visibility across the environment
- Real-time, risk-based decisions
- Frictionless user experiences
- Lower operational risk and lower cost
By embracing a unified, AI-powered identity security fabric, you create a living, learning system that strengthens over time – turning identity into your greatest security asset.
Future-proofing starts now
Cybersecurity isn’t about keeping pace – it’s about staying steps ahead. In this AI-driven world, you have a choice: bolt AI onto existing processes as a gimmick or embed it thoughtfully into every layer of your identity fabric to add value and drive your business forward intelligently.
The future of identity security isn’t just unified. It’s intelligent. And with the right combination of AI and human expertise, it’s unstoppable.
