Topic starter
19/12/2025 11:39 am
TL;DR: The article argues that modern IAM can support sustainability goals by reducing paper billing, commuting, device churn, MFA noise, and on-prem infrastructure emissions, citing PwC, Engie, and AWS data alongside Okta examples. The core issue for practitioners is that sustainability benefits only hold when identity controls are frictionless, secure, and measurable across human and non-human access patterns.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Okta: “How IAM Delivers Business Value for Your Sustainability Goals”.
By the numbers:
- Teleworking can result in 60% less CO2 emissions compared to commuting, according to Okta.
Key questions
Q: How can IAM teams support sustainability goals without weakening security?
A: Start by reducing unnecessary identity events, such as repeated logins, redundant approvals, and paper-based onboarding.
Q: What do teams need to measure before claiming identity reduces emissions?
A: Teams should measure onboarding completion, authentication challenge volume, digital adoption rates, and infrastructure efficiency before linking identity work to emissions reduction.
Q: Why do MFA prompts matter in a sustainability discussion?
A: MFA prompts matter because each authentication event consumes a small amount of energy, and attack traffic can multiply that cost at scale.
Practitioner guidance
- Measure onboarding abandonment against sustainability goals Track how many users start but do not complete paperless billing, registration, or account recovery flows, then compare those drop-off points with the volume of paper-based or assisted alternatives still in use.
- Separate legitimate MFA demand from attack-driven noise Review authentication telemetry for credential stuffing, bot activity, and repeated failed logins that generate unnecessary challenge prompts, then distinguish those events from genuine user friction.
- Evaluate identity platform architecture against on-prem alternatives Compare energy use, administrative overhead, and hardware dependence for cloud-hosted identity services versus locally operated authentication infrastructure before making sustainability claims.
Bottom line: Identity can contribute to sustainability only when it changes user behaviour and infrastructure use in measurable ways.
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This topic was modified 10 months ago by Abdelrahman
This topic was modified 4 days ago by NHI Mgmt Group
08/10/2026 5:31 pm
Identity now sits inside sustainability governance, not beside it: This article shows that IAM is no longer only a security control plane. When identity affects paperless billing adoption, remote work, authentication volume, and cloud infrastructure choices, it becomes part of the organisation’s environmental footprint. That broadens the governance surface for IAM and CIAM leaders, who now need to evidence outcomes as well as access control.
A question worth separating out:
Q: What is the difference between cloud-native and on-prem identity from a sustainability view?
A: Cloud-native identity typically concentrates workload on shared infrastructure, while on-prem identity often carries more server overhead, maintenance burden, and energy use. The difference matters because sustainability claims depend on where the identity workload runs and how efficiently it is operated.
👉 Read our full editorial: Identity can support sustainability goals, but governance still matters