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08/06/2026 4:09 pm
TL;DR: Identity sprawl, siloed IAM systems, and disconnected risk data leave organisations unable to see or control identity-based attack paths across human and machine identities in hybrid, multi-cloud environments, according to Axiad. The real shift is from product thinking to interoperable identity processes, where risk sharing and fabric-style integration become the operational baseline.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Axiad: The Next Big Thing in Identity Security: Identity Fabrics
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should security teams build an identity fabric in a hybrid environment?
A: They should start with identity inventory, then connect the systems that hold the most business-critical access paths and risk signals.
Q: Why do identity silos increase security risk?
A: Identity silos hide over-privilege, credential reuse, and inconsistent logging because each system sees only part of the access picture.
Q: What breaks when machine identities are managed separately from human identities?
A: Governance breaks because teams stop comparing like with like.
Practitioner guidance
- Map identity silos and handoffs Document where human, machine, and cloud identities are governed by different teams, different logs, or different policy engines.
- Test for shared risk visibility Require each identity control to prove it can consume and act on risk signals from adjacent systems, not only generate its own alerts.
- Unify machine and human identity governance Bring service accounts, workloads, endpoints, and user identities into a single inventory and access model so privilege review and anomaly detection are consistent across actor types.
What's in the full article
Axiad's full blog post covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- The vendor's five-step deployment sequence for assessing an identity fabric and prioritising systems.
- The article's practical examples of how identity risk should flow between IAM, XDR, SOC, SIEM/SOAR, and GRC.
- The vendor's discussion of how machine identities, cloud identities, and human identities fit into a composable model.
- The source's product-context explanation of why identity fabric thinking is intended to evolve existing infrastructure rather than replace it.
👉 Read Axiad's analysis of identity fabrics and hybrid identity risk →
Identity fabrics in hybrid environments: what IAM teams are missing?
Explore further
08/06/2026 5:38 pm
Identity silos are the real control failure, not just an architecture inconvenience. When identity systems cannot share risk data, organisations lose the ability to connect exposure, privilege, and behavioural context across environments. That is why lateral movement thrives in estates where access looks compliant inside each silo but unsafe across the whole chain. Practitioners should treat silo removal as a governance requirement, not an integration nice-to-have.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 96% of organisations store secrets outside of secrets managers in vulnerable locations including code, config files, and CI/CD tools, according to Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
- Only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts, which shows how quickly identity blind spots become governance blind spots.
A question worth separating out:
Q: How do you know if an identity fabric approach is working?
A: You should see identity risk data flowing between systems, faster correlation of exposed credentials or privilege changes, and fewer blind spots at the boundaries between tools. If IAM, SOC, and GRC still operate from different evidence sets, the fabric is still aspirational.
👉 Read our full editorial: Identity fabrics are the missing layer in hybrid identity security
