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“You need to know who they are and what they are allowed to do and be aware if something goes wrong.”
Peter Barker, Chief Product Officer, Ping Identity
AI is no longer a future capability; it is now deeply embedded in how organisations operate, make decisions, and serve customers. Intelligent agents are orchestrating workflows, advising employees, generating content, and increasingly, acting autonomously.
As enterprises shift to AI-first operating models, a foundational question has become urgent:
Who - or what - do we trust?
Identity is no longer just a login step. It has become the control plane for modern digital trust: determining who or what can act, how far their authority extends, and whether their actions can be verified.
According to the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Access Management, both Ping Identity (which now includes ForgeRock) and Okta remain recognised leaders, known for their visionary strategies and strong execution that shape the future of secure, intelligent identity ecosystems.
Colibri Digital, as a partner of both Ping Identity and Okta, helps organisations move toward this future. A future where identity is unified across humans, machines, and AI agents, creating a security fabric that is intelligent, scalable, and resilient.
In this guide, we’ll highlight the impact AI is having on identity and management, and what you can do about it.
Identity systems were built for people. AI has changed the landscape. Today, organisations must govern:
These non-human actors already outnumber people dramatically. According to research undertaken by CyberArk, there are 82 machine identities for every one human in organisations around the world. Each machine identity has its own credentials, keys, tokens, or certificates that must be secured.
Without identity governance, organisations risk “rogue AIs” making unauthorised decisions or attackers hijacking machine accounts.
Recent industry events reinforced this shift. Ping YOUniverse 2025 highlighted that identity platforms must now govern both human and machine entities as equal citizens, while Oktane 2025 showcased work on new standards that enable secure agent-to-app interactions. Together, they signalled that the IAM community is preparing for a world filled with non-human actors.
As AI introduces more actors, the number of ways security can be compromised increases proportionally. Today, attackers aren’t waiting, they’re already using AI to phish at scale, crack passwords faster, and build deepfake personas.
As per Verizon DBIR 2025, stolen credentials are the number one attack with around 88% of web app breaches being caused by it. This proves the login is the new battlefield.
At both YOUniverse and Oktane 2025, security leaders warned that AI is now being weaponised against identity. The collective message: phishing-resistant authentication and continuous risk evaluation are no longer optional.
AI is powerful, but it’s also blind without context. Identity provides the who, what, when, and why behind every interaction. With strong IAM in place, AI systems can:
Without identity, AI becomes an uncontrolled engine - powerful but potentially dangerous. This was reflected in recent Identity conferences, where “verified trust” and “identity fabrics” emerged as unifying themes.
In short: without identity, AI becomes an uncontrolled engine; with it, a trusted copilot.
AI increases both the stakes and the complexity of identity management. Unfortunately, many organisations aren’t prepared.
As experts noted at the 2025 identity events, governance and lifecycle control must now extend to AI agents as well as people. Day-zero identity proofing and automated revocation are becoming baseline security practices.
AI introduces another challenge: explainability. Regulators, boards, and customers increasingly demand to know why AI made a decision.
Identity is the missing audit layer. With strong IAM, you can answer:
By tying every AI decision to an authenticated identity, you create accountability. Without this, AI adoption becomes a liability.
AI isn’t just a threat; it’s also a powerful defender when paired with identity, supercharging identity security when guided by strong governance. Modern IAM solutions use AI and machine learning to:
AI adoption is accelerating because it brings undeniable advantages to modern enterprises:
These advantages make AI indispensable for innovation and growth. But they also raise the stakes: the faster, smarter, and more scalable AI becomes, the more critical it is to anchor every action in identity.
Forward-thinking organisations are already moving toward identity first architectures for AI:
Both Ping and Okta converged on this vision in 2025: an AI and IAM-powered future, where trust is continuous, context-rich, and machine-inclusive. Identity is no longer the gateway, it’s the fabric that binds every decision, every signal, and every agent together.
AI is rewriting the rules of business and cybercrime alike. But trust remains the foundation.
Identity is how we anchor trust in a world where machines, not just people, make decisions.
If AI is the brain of the modern enterprise, identity is its conscience.
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