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05/07/2026 10:44 pm
TL;DR: 2024 pushed IAM toward platform consolidation, broader zero-trust coverage, AI-assisted governance, stronger ITDR, tighter compliance automation, third-party lifecycle controls, and first-class IoT identity management, according to Linx Security. The core shift is that IAM is becoming the operating layer for resilience, not just access administration.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Linx Security: 2024 in Review: The Key IAM Trends Enterprises Must Watch for 2025
By the numbers:
- Nearly 60% of enterprises prioritized consolidating their IAM tools to reduce complexity and improve efficiency.
- 70% of enterprises adopted automated IAM tools to streamline access reviews and ensure audit readiness.
- 62% of breaches involved third-party credentials, highlighting gaps in onboarding, monitoring, and offboarding processes.
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should security teams reduce identity sprawl without losing control?
A: Security teams should first map where identity data, policy enforcement, and access logging live, then collapse redundant tools that create fragmented governance.
Q: Why do third-party identities create such persistent access risk?
A: Third-party identities often receive access for a specific task, but the access is not always removed when the task ends.
Q: How can organisations tell whether zero trust is really covering non-human identities?
A: A strong signal is whether APIs, service accounts, and devices are subject to the same continuous verification logic as human users.
Practitioner guidance
- Rationalise identity tooling around control coverage Map every IAM, IGA, ITDR, and directory function to the controls it actually performs, then remove overlapping tools that create blind spots between policy, logging, and enforcement.
- Extend zero trust to machine and workload identities Apply continuous verification to APIs, IoT devices, service accounts, and other non-human identities using the same policy discipline you apply to high-risk human access.
- Validate identity data before automating decisions Check that ownership, entitlements, and privilege mappings are accurate enough for AI-supported access review, anomaly detection, and policy tuning to be reliable.
What's in the full article
Linx Security's full review covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- The vendor's full trend-by-trend breakdown of 2024 IAM shifts and 2025 expectations
- The specific action lists tied to each theme, including consolidation, zero trust, AI, and ITDR
- The original external references that support the vendor's claims and benchmarks
- The company perspective on how to prioritise identity investments across the 2025 programme
👉 Read Linx Security's 2024 IAM trends review for 2025 planning →
IAM trends for 2025: what enterprise teams should prepare for?
Explore further
05/07/2026 10:46 pm
Identity consolidation is now a governance problem, not just an efficiency decision. The article correctly shows that scattered IAM tooling creates operational drag, but the deeper issue is control fragmentation. When identity data, access policy, and response tooling sit in separate systems, nobody has a complete view of entitlement risk. That is why consolidation keeps surfacing as a security requirement, not a procurement preference. Practitioners should treat platform sprawl as a governance defect.
A few things that frame the scale:
- From our research: 79% of organisations have experienced secrets leaks, with 77% of these incidents resulting in tangible damage. That is why secret governance has to sit inside the identity programme, not beside it, according to Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
- Our research also shows that only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts, which explains why identity sprawl keeps turning into governance blind spots.
A question worth separating out:
Q: What should teams do when AI starts helping with access reviews?
A: Teams should verify the identity data first, then define which decisions AI may support and which remain human-approved. AI can speed up review cycles and flag anomalies, but it cannot correct missing ownership, stale entitlements, or unclear privilege boundaries. If the underlying records are poor, the automation will scale the error instead of reducing it.
👉 Read our full editorial: IAM trends for 2025 point to consolidation, zero trust and AI
