ConnectAny and identity visibility: what gaps do teams still miss?

TL;DR: Oak describes how ConnectAny extends identity coverage into legacy apps, files, on-prem systems and AI agents, including out-of-band access and runtime activity, so identity data can be governed in one graph instead of scattered across exports and backlogs. The real shift is that visibility becomes operational only when access, ownership and activity are tied together across every identity type.

Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Oak: “Four Ways In: How ConnectAny Reaches Every Identity in Your Estate”.

Key questions

Q: How should teams govern legacy applications that cannot be modified?

A: Use a gateway or reverse proxy to enforce externalized authorization before the application receives the request.

Q: What breaks when access is granted outside the normal IAM workflow?

A: When access is granted outside the normal IAM workflow, the governance model loses visibility and the entitlement may remain live long enough to be abused or audited as a finding.

Q: When should organisations prioritise runtime activity over entitlement inventories?

A: Use runtime activity whenever you need to decide whether access is still justified.

Practitioner guidance

• Inventory the systems your IGA never onboarded List legacy applications, homegrown databases, file feeds and local tools where access is still granted outside standard workflows.
• Trace entitlement creation at the source Document where each identity type receives access, especially when permissions are assigned directly in the application or database rather than through a central request path.
• Pair entitlement reviews with usage evidence Require last-use and activity context in every review so reviewers can separate needed dormant access from stale privilege.

Bottom line: Identity governance weakens fastest in systems that were never fully integrated, because access hidden at the source is hard to review or revoke.

What's in the full announcement

Oak's full blog post covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:

• How ConnectAny reaches SaaS, cloud, on-prem and file-based systems with specific connector patterns
• The practical differences between native connectors, Build with Oak, file ingestion and on-prem runner deployments
• How Oak models ownership, entitlements and runtime activity across human, machine and AI agent identities
• What the claims-system example looks like in the graph after the connector and collector layers are in place

👉 Read Oak's analysis of identity coverage across legacy apps and AI agents →

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