Nine out of ten (89 per cent) senior IT leaders report that managing the growing identity footprint is challenging, reflecting the scale and complexity of modern security environments.
According to global cybersecurity company Keeper Security: "Identity now underpins how modern enterprises operate. It governs workforce access, machine interactions, service accounts, automation workflows and AI-driven processes across cloud and hybrid environments. What was once a directory-based function has evolved into operational infrastructure with a ballooning cyber-attack surface."
Keeper Security's latest report, Identity Security at Machine Speed, reports that identity authority is often distributed across systems, with no single cybersecurity control plane. Globally, 96 per cent of the 3,200 senior IT leaders across the United States, Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East cited disconnected or poorly integrated security tools as creating exploitable gaps.
Detection of unauthorized activity is lagging behind the rapidly spreading identity footprint. In 72 per cent of organizations, credential misuse is not detected in real time, with most taking hours, and in some cases days or weeks to identify unauthorized privileged access.
A major catalyst for the growing identity footprint is the rapid acceleration of AI adoption. As it accelerates, new governance gaps emerge. Globally, 43 per cent of respondents identify AI-related non-human identity (NHI) management and security as a top identity governance gap, climbing to 51 per cent among US respondents, suggesting American enterprises are feeling the pressure of machine identity growth more acutely than their global counterparts.
Employee AI use is a growing concern
The growing trend for employees to use AI is also a top concern: over half (56 per cent) of respondents are concerned about employees inadvertently exposing sensitive information to AI systems. This figure rises to 67 per cent among US respondents, who also report higher-than-average concern about lack of visibility into employee AI tool usage (47 per cent versus 42 per cent globally). Shadow AI creates blind spots — a lack of visibility into the AI tools employees use was identified as a significant governance gap by 42 per cent of organizations globally.
"AI agents, service accounts and machine identities radically outnumber human users in many environments. Most organizations lack the capabilities in their current identity security stack to govern them. Every unmanaged identity is a prime target for attackers," said Darren Guccione, CEO and Co-founder of Keeper Security. "Given the accelerated proliferation of AI and machine identities within enterprise infrastructure, the implementation of pervasive identity governance with real-time detection and least-privilege enforcement is essential."