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11/06/2026 10:56 pm
TL;DR: IAM trends are shifting toward zero trust, biometrics, layered controls, decentralized identity, entitlement management, AI-driven governance, and cloud-based access models, according to Zluri’s review of current identity and access management trends. The core issue is not feature adoption but whether these patterns reduce standing trust, improve reviewability, and narrow access without creating new governance blind spots.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Zluri: Access Management 7 Identity and Access Management Trends
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should security teams implement zero trust in IAM without creating more friction?
A: Start with high-risk access paths and require re-evaluation at each sensitive request rather than for every login.
Q: Why do cloud and hybrid environments make IAM governance harder?
A: Because access becomes distributed across multiple platforms, each with its own entitlement model, logging, and review cadence.
Q: What do organisations get wrong about passwordless access?
A: They often treat it as a complete security strategy rather than an authentication improvement.
Practitioner guidance
- Re-map access by actor type Separate human, non-human, and AI-driven access paths in your governance model so review, revocation, and approval logic match the identity being governed.
- Tie every elevated entitlement to an expiry condition Require a time bound or task bound end state for privileged access, then verify that entitlement removal is logged and reviewable.
- Use zero trust for sensitive access first Apply continuous verification to the highest-risk applications and resources before extending it across the broader environment.
What's in the full article
Zluri's full article covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- Specific examples of how each IAM trend is being applied across modern enterprise environments.
- The article's longer discussion of passwordless, biometric, and layered access patterns.
- The vendor's practical framing for organisations comparing zero trust, AI, and cloud IAM priorities.
- Additional context around how Zluri positions these trends for IT managers.
👉 Read Zluri's analysis of 7 identity and access management trends →
Identity and access management trends: what IAM teams should watch?
Explore further
12/06/2026 7:23 am
IAM trends only matter when they change governance outcomes, not when they add tools. Zero trust, passwordless, entitlement management, and AI-assisted controls all promise better access discipline, but the real test is whether they reduce standing privilege, improve reviewability, and narrow uncontrolled access paths. If the programme still cannot answer who has access, why they have it, and when that access expires, the trend has not changed the governance problem. Practitioners should measure whether the trend changes control state, not whether it sounds modern.
A few things that frame the scale:
- Only 19.6% of security professionals express strong confidence in their organisation's ability to securely manage non-human workload identities, according to The 2024 Non-Human Identity Security Report.
- 88.5% of organisations acknowledge that their non-human IAM practices lag behind or are merely on par with their human identity and access management efforts.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Who is accountable when privileged access is granted but not removed?
A: The accountable owner is usually the process owner who approved the entitlement, the system owner who allowed it to persist, and the governance team that failed to enforce review. Good IAM practice makes that accountability visible through logs, expiry controls, and certification records. Without those artefacts, revocation becomes a hope rather than a control.
👉 Read our full editorial: Identity and access management trends are reshaping access control
