Topic starter
06/11/2026 6:39 pm
TL;DR: Practitioner demand is still centered on application coverage gaps, manual provisioning backlogs, and disconnected systems, even as booth messaging shifts hard toward agentic AI, according to READI's Identiverse 2026 recap. The governance challenge is not new capability hype; it is closing the basic identity control gaps that keep audits noisy and access operations manual.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by READI: “Identiverse 2026: identity governance’s unfinished business.”.
Key questions
Q: How do teams know if identity governance is actually closing access gaps?
A: Look for whether offboarding, recertification, and entitlement review remove access across every linked record, not just the primary directory entry.
Q: Why do manual provisioning workflows create identity governance risk?
A: Manual workflows create inconsistent approval paths, delayed access removal, and poor audit evidence.
Q: How does identity governance change for AI systems with runtime access?
A: Identity governance for AI systems with runtime access must extend from static approval to continuous control of the agent's delegated scope, tool permissions and accountable human owner.
Practitioner guidance
- Audit application coverage first Build a definitive list of applications that issue or consume access, then compare it to the set currently governed by your IGA process.
- Remove manual steps from high-volume provisioning Prioritise the joins, moves, and leavers that generate the most queue time, exception handling, and stale access.
- Tie every access pathway to an owner Require named business and technical owners for each application, integration, and non-human access path before it enters the governance model.
Bottom line: Identity governance programmes still fail most often at application coverage, provisioning throughput, and system integration rather than at high-level strategy.
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06/11/2026 6:42 pm
Identity governance is still being judged on fundamentals, not vision. READI's Identiverse 2026 commentary shows that practitioners are still asking for coverage, provisioning, and system integration before they ask for more advanced automation. That is a sign the market has not finished converting governance from a set of manual tasks into an operational control plane. The implication is that roadmaps built around novelty will continue to miss the real buying trigger.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 67% of organisations still rely heavily on static credentials despite the risks they pose to agentic AI deployments, according to the 2026 Infrastructure Identity Survey.
- Only 13% of organisations feel extremely prepared for the reality of agentic AI despite the majority racing toward autonomous adoption, according to the 2026 Infrastructure Identity Survey.
A question worth separating out:
Q: What is the best way to govern disconnected identity systems?
A: The best way to govern disconnected identity systems is to federate their records into a single operational view for identity governance, access reviews and privileged access oversight. That view should reconcile users, service accounts, groups, entitlements and certificates across each source system, while preserving the authoritative source for each attribute. Without reconciliation, orphaned access and duplicate identities persist.
👉 Read our full editorial: Identity governance’s unfinished business still blocks agentic AI