AI in IAM: Is it Truly Valuable?

AI is everywhere. What began as machine learning and evolved into novelty technology applications has rapidly progressed into a significant component of daily life and enterprise strategy. It influences how our businesses plan, code, implement, and protect our most sensitive assets. Among its most transformative applications is its growing role in identity and access management (IAM).

The Expanding Influence of AI in Identity Security

Within identity security, AI is reshaping how we define a mature IAM program. What once required manual reviews, repetitive decision-making, and active triage is now increasingly supported by intelligent automation. AI streamlines operations, reduces human bottlenecks and errors, and strengthens security postures through robust, context-driven assistance and automation.

The Strength of Predictive AI

Modern identity programs lean heavily on predictive analytics—AI capabilities that run continuously in the background to analyze behaviors, support automated and informed decision-making, and minimize risk. These capabilities enhance and strengthen several core IAM functions:

1. Behavioral analytics that assess user activity in real time, identifying anomalies or subtle deviations long before they signal a larger issue.
2. Risk-informed authentication that dynamically adapts based on context, behavior patterns, and emerging threat signals.
3. Automated identity lifecycle management that accurately assigns and adjusts access rights and aligns privileges to roles, departments, and other criteria throughout the identity's relationship with the company.
4. Advanced role and privilege discovery that uncovers hidden risk, detects access patterns, and produces cleaner, more efficient role structures.

These enhancements reduce manual workload while elevating the speed and accuracy of critical identity-related security decisions.

AI's Role in Next Generation IAM

Automating basic identity tasks is no longer a competitive advantage—it's critical to your company's survival in the modern marketplace. The next wave of IAM maturity lies in continuous optimization and deeper integration across tools and processes. Predictive models will be used to evaluate entitlement changes, monitor privileged activity, and adjust access as users, systems and business needs evolve.

The end goal for AI use in IAM is to ensure every identity—human or non-human—has exactly the right access, and that any deviation from expected behavior is surfaced immediately and addressed appropriately.

The Role of Identity Fabric in AI-driven IAM

The value of AI in IAM comes to life when its insights are applied across an identity fabric. This integrated, unified approach to IAM connects data, policies, roles, and controls across the enterprise to eliminate gaps, increasing security and business efficiency.

Within an identity fabric, predictive AI can analyze large amounts of data and behavioral trends to anticipate potential anomalies or threats before they impact your organization. On the other hand, generative AI applies data and behavioral intelligence to create natural language strategy suggestions and policy direction, generate workflows, and connect datasets into cohesive insights. This value can provide stronger security, design and implement more robust lifecycle management strategies, and support more accurate decision-making.

The combination of predictive and generative AI enables organizations to detect risk and strengthen identity governance across the enterprise.

The Value of a Unified AI IAM Strategy

Today's enterprises are characterized by exploding numbers of non-human identities, remote and hybrid workforces, and complex hybrid and fully managed infrastructures. Siloed AI solutions can add to the complexity as insights could lead to mismatched guidance and strategies and disconnected solutions.

A unified identity fabric provides a coherent approach to IAM. It connects tools, streamlines governance, closes visibility gaps, and allows AI-driven insights to support and strengthen one another, eliminating silos. The result is stronger, scalable security with greater efficiency across the enterprise.

The Real Question: Are You Positioned to Use AI Effectively?

AI has already proven its value in identity security. The true challenge is ensuring you have an approach that spans your identity fabric to use AI responsibly, reliably, and in alignment with your identity strategy.

Enterprises that integrate AI at the core of their identity fabric will be best positioned to navigate evolving threats, reduce complexity, and operate with greater efficiency.

About the Author: Lori serves as the Global Product Marketing Manager for One Identity's Active Directory Security and Management Solutions. She is responsible for go-to-market strategy, planning and execution of strategic campaigns and programs, content creation, delivery and enablement support for Active Roles, and other pipeline- and revenue-driving strategic initiatives. Prior to One Identity, Lori was Director of Global Marketing at CA Technologies and founded the product marketing function at OpenReach and Iron Mountain. Lori has held senior product marketing and consulting roles at Intel Corporation, IBM, BATM, and other technology companies.