Ping Identity’s 2026 State of Trust Index and identity risk

At a glance

What this is: This is a Ping Identity survey report about the state of trust in identity programmes and the risk gaps that weaken them.

Why it matters: It matters because IAM, IGA, PAM, and security teams need a shared view of where trust breaks down across human and non-human identities before they can prioritise controls.

👉 Read Ping Identity's 2026 State of Trust Index on identity trust gaps

Context

Identity trust is the degree to which authentication, access, and governance controls reliably support the identities that interact with an organisation. In practice, that means the programme has to hold across users, service accounts, APIs, and delegated access paths, not just during login.

Ping Identity positions this report around where identity programmes are strong, where trust gaps expose risk, and what to prioritise next. For practitioners, the useful question is not whether identity exists, but whether the control set proves trust continuously across the lifecycle of access.

Key questions

Q: How should teams measure identity governance maturity across human and non-human identities?

A: Start by measuring whether access decisions are discoverable, reviewable, and revocable across the full identity lifecycle. Mature programmes can show who owns each identity, when it was last reviewed, and how quickly access is removed after need changes. If those steps differ by identity type, the governance model is not yet consistent.

Q: Why do non-human identities weaken trust programmes so quickly?

A: Because they are created fast, used silently, and often left in place after the original task ends. That combination makes them a persistence problem as much as an access problem. If lifecycle and privilege review do not include NHIs, the trust model will drift even when authentication controls look healthy.

Q: What should security teams prioritise before scaling identity security?

A: Security teams should prioritise identity data quality, standard access patterns, and clear ownership for lifecycle decisions. If identity records are fragmented, every downstream control becomes harder to trust. A clean data layer and consistent governance model make scale possible without multiplying exceptions.

Q: How do IAM, IGA, and PAM teams avoid fragmented trust governance?

A: Use a shared identity risk model that covers authentication, entitlement management, privileged access, and offboarding. Fragmentation usually hides stale access and unclear ownership. A common governance model gives each team the same facts, which is the only practical way to keep identity trust from breaking at handoff points.

Technical breakdown

Identity trust as a governance measure

Identity trust is not a single control. It is the combined reliability of authentication, authorisation, lifecycle management, and auditability across the identities that use systems. In a mature programme, trust is evidenced by revocation speed, access scope, and the ability to verify who or what still has active privilege. When those signals are weak, identity becomes a risk amplifier rather than a control plane. The report is useful because it frames trust as something to measure and manage, not something to assume.

Practical implication: define trust indicators for each identity class and review them as governance metrics, not just technical settings.

Where identity gaps become security gaps

Identity gaps usually appear when organisations treat access, authentication, and governance as separate workstreams. That split creates blind spots in entitlement scope, offboarding, and privileged access oversight. The result is familiar: access persists after it should be removed, authentication proves a person or system once, and governance assumes the state has not changed. A trust index matters because it forces these controls into one risk conversation instead of three disconnected ones.

Practical implication: align access reviews, authentication policy, and privilege governance to the same risk model.

Why a trust index matters for NHI governance

Non-human identities often expose the weakest trust assumptions because they operate at machine speed and are rarely reviewed with the same discipline as human access. Service accounts, API keys, and tokens can persist long after the business need has changed, which makes lifecycle control central to trust. For IAM teams, the value of a trust index is that it can surface whether non-human access is governed as a first-class identity population or left as operational residue.

Practical implication: include NHIs in the same trust review cycle as human and privileged access, rather than treating them as a separate exception class.

NHI Mgmt Group analysis

Identity trust is becoming a control outcome, not a branding phrase. Reports like this matter when they shift the conversation from authentication features to governance evidence. Organisations do not need more language about trust if they cannot show lifecycle, privilege, and revocation behaviour across identity populations. The practitioner conclusion is simple: trust has to be measurable before it can be defended.

Non-human identities are the fastest way for trust assumptions to drift. Machine identities are easier to create than to retire, and they often accumulate access that nobody revisits. That makes service accounts, tokens, and API keys a direct test of whether an identity programme is operating as a system of record or a pile of exceptions. The conclusion is that NHI governance must sit inside the core trust model, not outside it.

Trust gaps usually reflect governance fragmentation rather than missing technology. When authentication, access reviews, privileged access, and lifecycle management are owned by different teams, the programme loses continuity. The report’s value is that it encourages a single view of identity risk across human and non-human access paths. Practitioners should use that view to re-order priorities around control continuity, not tool count.

Trust gap visibility: identity programmes fail when they cannot show where access is still active, why it exists, and who owns it. That is especially true when identities are distributed across SaaS, cloud, and machine-to-machine workflows. The conclusion is that governance must be able to explain active trust, not just assert it.

Identity trust only matters if it reaches the delegated edge. Modern environments depend on users, systems, and automated workflows passing authority down chains that are often poorly documented. If the report helps practitioners see where delegated access is weakening their assurance model, that is the right use of the index. The conclusion is to govern the chain, not only the login.

From our research:

• Only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts, according to Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
• 91.6% of secrets remain valid five days after the targeted organisation is notified, showing how slowly remediation can lag governance.
• That gap makes NHI Lifecycle Management Guide the natural next resource for provisioning, rotation, and offboarding discipline.

What this signals

Trust programmes will keep underperforming until NHIs are measured alongside human access. When only a small fraction of organisations can see their service accounts clearly, governance reports overstate actual control. The next maturity step is not another dashboard, but a model that shows where identity ownership and revocation still break down across the full population.

Identity trust will increasingly be judged by lifecycle evidence. Boards and auditors do not need more claims about secure access, they need proof that stale identities are removed, privileged scope is bounded, and delegated access is explainable. The organisations that can show that evidence will have a much stronger story for NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 alignment and internal accountability.

For practitioners

• Define identity trust metrics Set measurable indicators for authentication assurance, privilege scope, revocation speed, and stale access so trust can be reviewed as part of governance reporting.
• Fold NHIs into access reviews Treat service accounts, API keys, tokens, and certificates as reviewable identities in the same governance cadence as human and privileged access.
• Break down control silos Align IAM, IGA, PAM, and lifecycle ownership around one identity risk model so trust gaps are not hidden between teams.
• Track delegated access paths Map where access is inherited through apps, APIs, and automation so the programme can spot trust drift before it becomes persistent exposure.

Key takeaways

• The report is a trust gap lens on identity governance, not a product feature summary.
• Non-human identities remain the hardest part of the trust equation because visibility and lifecycle control are still weak.
• Practitioners should turn trust into measurable evidence across access, revocation, and ownership.

Key terms

• Identity trust: The set of assumptions an environment makes about how a user, device, or service proves who it is. When those assumptions are weak, attackers can enter through valid authentication instead of breaking infrastructure, which turns identity into the primary attack surface.
• Trust gap: The space between what a customer expects from a transaction and what the merchant proves after checkout. In digital commerce, it often grows when confirmation, shipping updates, refunds or legitimacy signals are unclear, delayed or inconsistent.
• Delegated access path: A delegated access path is the chain of identities, tokens, connectors, and approvals that lets one system act through another. It becomes a governance concern when the path outlives the original approval or can be reused for actions beyond the intended business purpose.

What's in the full report

Ping Identity's full report covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:

• Survey findings on where identity trust is strongest and where programmes expose avoidable gaps.
• The report's prioritisation guidance for teams deciding what to fix first in access and governance.
• Context on how practitioners should interpret trust gaps across access, authentication, and lifecycle control.
• The complete set of observations and recommendations behind the 2026 State of Trust Index.

👉 Ping Identity's full report covers the survey context and prioritisation guidance behind the State of Trust Index.

Deepen your knowledge

NHI governance, agentic AI identity, and machine identity security are core topics in our NHI Foundation Level course, the industry's only accredited NHI security programme. If you are responsible for identity security strategy or NHI governance in your organisation, it is worth exploring.