Access granted: the future of identity in the cloud

Shashwat Sehgal discusses the evolving landscape of identity management in the cloud era, emphasizing the need for organizations to rethink their identity strategies as they face increasingly complex challenges with multi-cloud environments and machine identities. Traditional identity management tools, built for a predominantly on-premises infrastructure, are now inadequate as they create blind spots and inconsistencies, unable to cope with the demands of a cloud-native world where identities are numerous and often non-human. Sehgal highlights that identity has become the new security perimeter, requiring a shift from managing identities to mastering them through modern, cloud-native platforms that prioritize discovery, risk reduction, automation, and unified governance. He argues for a strategic overhaul rather than merely upgrading or swapping tools, pointing out the potential to simplify and consolidate identity management to enhance security and operational efficiency. The article calls for a fresh approach to identity management that integrates automation and governance to meet the demands of a rapidly changing digital landscape.