2025: The year of evolution in identity security

The year 2025 will not be a revolutionary one, it will be evolutionary, with developments coming into effect that were necessitated by events and happenings in 2024, and solutions to address these events reaching maturity levels that allow an appropriate, comprehensive response. With threats like ransomware certain to continue, identity resilience is going to become more important in the year ahead and, as such, identity will become the critical component of security.

This shift in emphasis started to take place in 2024, but there will be a greater focus on it among business leaders in the year ahead as they start to understand that identity is one of the biggest threats to any organization as it is a key vector for attackers.

Based on this there will be six key trends that we will see evolving in 2025:

1.    Machine Identity Management will become the cornerstone of Identity and Access Management (IAM), requiring governance, automation, and Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) tools

Machine identities are not new. They've been around ever since people have been accessing information and data, but we have realized that these identities can be easily compromised because they are not governed properly with sufficient controls and, in some instances, security teams do not even know what identities exist or where they are.

As such identity, observability, discovery and awareness are going to be vital focus areas for security teams in 2025 as they set out to find all the shadows in the organization and discover where all the different types of accounts are hiding, so they can manage and govern them properly. This will be a cornerstone of identity conversations this year.

2.    Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) will emerge as a critical layer in the IAM stack to combat identity-centric attacks

With the increase in ransomware attacks, identity resilience is a vital component in combating identity-centric attacks and protecting an organization and its data. However, if companies do not know what identities exist or where they are, they cannot protect them.

As such observability, awareness and visibility of all identities within an organization will be critical in driving better identity resilience. To achieve this, companies will need to implement Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) to be aware of where the identities are, how they are being leveraged and what to do when that identity is compromised. By adopting this approach, when combating identity-centric attacks, security teams will know exactly where the identities are, how to respond and how to appropriately wall them off as needed, as ITDR forms the center of the detection response solutions and gets them working together.

3.    AI-driven IAM will automate processes, detect risks, and address workforce skill shortages

With AI adoption on the rise, it is not surprising that AI tools and solutions will continue to be used and implemented across businesses. In the case of IAM, AI will aid in addressing workforce shortages. To achieve this, AI will be leveraged with the Industrial Edge Management (IEM) stack to provide better analytics and predictability, and automate processes to enhance the security of these identities. This will aid in early threat detection as ITDR leverages AI-driven processes to improve monitoring and response detection. A further benefit is that AI will also automate repetitive tasks within the IEM, addressing the skills gap and alleviating some pressure from the security teams.

GenAI will also play a role in plugging the skills gap as it removes the need for highly skilled teams to decipher entitlements when working on attestation processes. GenAI will provide a clear, concise view of what access is being granted, approved and to whom.

4.    Passwordless Authentication will become mainstream, driven by FIDO2 adoption and improved user experience

In 2024, passwordless authentication started to gain the attention of security teams and in 2025 it will become more mainstream as businesses start to realize the security benefits that it offers. However, this does not mean that it will eliminate the password in its totality, rather, there will be fewer passwords and less frequent prompting for passwords as companies adopt other verification tools such as tokens and biometrics to allow access to company systems and data.

This year will be a transitional one for the password as companies start to see the value in removing it to provide a more secure but flexible solution. This is being driven partly by the increased adoption of FIDO2, which reinforces that there are more viable alternatives to validate user identities than the password. However, passwords will continue to be widely used throughout the year, but as we move into 2026 and beyond, they will be used less and less and be replaced by passwordless authentication.

5.    Decentralised Identity (SSI) will rise due to privacy mandates and interoperability requirements

Policy mandates, privacy mandates, and interoperability requirements are driving companies to decentralize their identities into different directories, pockets, or systems. Rather than storing them in a centralized repository, organizations realize that the central orchestration and management of these identities according to proper standards and controls is more important than keeping them centralized into one solution.

This shift will see a decline in companies investing heavily in centralized solutions that do not deliver the value for the time, effort and money that they need to get everything into one solution and manage it all. Rather, decentralized systems that use AI to deliver orchestration and implement rules will provide a more beneficial solution for many organizations to monitor and secure their identities.

6.    Continuous Identity Assurance will be a critical Zero Trust enabler, ensuring real-time adaptive access controls

Aligned with automation, Continuous Identity Assurance will become a more widely used approach to driving zero trust in an organization by monitoring usage patterns in real-time, verifying users and providing access based on these patterns. This will be achieved as companies embrace AI, passwordless and ITDR to close the visibility and skills gap and ultimately deliver true real-time adaptive authentication access controls.

On the other end of the spectrum, adaptive access controls will deliver better identity observability, identity resilience and continuous identity assurance of what is going on in the system and respond as necessary to prevent access if it is not required.

While none of these solutions are new or revolutionary, they will start to become more mainstream over the next year as companies strive to tackle some of the major identity challenges and issues that they are wrestling with, particularly in terms of machine identities, which present a big threat to organizational security.

As technologies and tools such as AI gain traction, they will help to close the skills gap which in turn will close a growing security gap, as they provide enhanced observability, visibility and awareness and allow organizations to safeguard their assets against identity-centric attacks. From this, it is evident that companies will move from traditional security approaches to prioritize identity resilience and protect their data in 2025.

Image Credit: Dzmitry Auramchik / Dreamstime.com

David Morimanno is Director of Identity and Access Management Technologies at Xalient.