Evolve Your Identity Governance with AI Agents: Why It is Critical Now
Traditional identity governance can’t keep up with today’s sprawl of apps and identities. Learn why autonomous, AI-powered control is the future—and how it cuts risk, reduces manual work, and transforms security from reactive to proactive.
In this article
Most companies still can’t answer the simplest security question: Who has access to what—and should they?
It is not for lack of trying. Enterprises today manage an average of 650+ apps and face a 50x increase in total identities, including not just people but also bots, agents, and service accounts. Yet the tools we use to govern that sprawl haven’t kept up. Static policies, spreadsheet reviews, role bloat, and dashboards layered on top of outdated processes just don’t scale anymore.
As identity becomes the #1 threat vector, we’re past the point where visibility and automation are enough. We need autonomy.
The Challenge: Identity Is Moving Too Fast for Humans Alone
For years, traditional IGA tools promised control and governance. They were built for the on-prem era where the network perimeter was relied on heavily for proactive security while they delivered manual reviews, quarterly certifications, and policy-driven workflows to manage risk. But in 2025, that approach is breaking down.
The numbers make it plain:
- Access Sprawl: Over 70% of IT leaders admit that users have more access than they need, despite having governance programs in place.
- Security Risks: 23% of IT professionals reported instances where AI agents were tricked into revealing access credentials.
- Lack of Governance: Only 44% have governance policies in place to manage AI agent activities.
- Operational Inefficiencies: 80% of orgs still manage joiner–mover–leaver processes manually through emails and spreadsheets. Access requests go unanswered, offboarding lags behind, and IT teams are buried in tickets.
- Audit Pressures: Regulators now expect evidence of least privilege by default, with remediation timelines measured in hours—not quarters. Static attestations won’t cut it anymore.
The Shift: From Reactive Governance to Autonomous Control
What organizations need now is not more dashboards or more dashboards—but a new governance model that has the 4 key capabilities:
1. Full Tech Stack Coverage, Including Shadow IT and Unmanaged Apps
Apps have exploded and most of them sit outside governance with missing coverage, leading to orphaned accounts, rising risks and costs. Auto-discover and provide comprehensive control across all apps - SaaS, cloud and on-premise with easy-to-build AI powered connectors. The platform should support even your disconnected apps which lack modern APIs. This should be fast and easy to deploy in days, rather than taking months or years, covering the 30-50% that legacy vendors miss.
2. Lifecycle Automation Across JML Events
Identity changes are event-driven and are an important core when it comes to running a business - be it security, productivity or cost gains. A new hire, role switch, or departure should trigger automated provisioning or revocation across all systems, not just the ones with out-of-the-box connectors.
3. AI-Driven Role and Access Policy Creation
Static policies lead to access sprawl and static roles lead to role bloat. AI can mine real-world usage patterns to build roles and attribute-based access models that actually reflect how work gets done. These can evolve over time—not stay frozen in a spreadsheet.
4. Continuous, Risk-Based Access Reviews
Quarterly certifications aren’t enough. Modern platforms enable always-on access monitoring, highlighting anomalies, stale access, and SoD violations as they happen—not months later. They should speed up reviews with highlights to what has changed since the last review campaign to help app owners, IT and GRC teams.
5. Intelligent Risk-Based Insights
Enterprises are drowning in data and yet lack the analytics to answer questions as to who has access to what. They lack the context needed to understand if that access should be allowed or revoked. IT owners grant access with cloned policies and app owners rubberstamp them, leading to security gaps and anomalies. This is where an AI agent is your coworker who helps you take confident proactive action by analysing your environment and surfacing toxic access and violations.
This is what’s emerging as Autonomous Identity Governance. It has to be delivered with AI and Agentic Workflows as the heart of the system, not as an added bolt-on. In a world of SaaS bloat, identity sprawl, and nonstop change, AI agents aren’t a nice to have—they’re a fundamental requirement.
The Result: What Good Governance Looks Like
The benefits of modernizing IGA aren’t just conceptual. According to the research, let’s take a look at numbers again:
- Organizations that automate JML processes reduce workload by up to 70%
- Risk-based reviews can cut audit prep time by 90%
- AI-based integration builder can generate connectors that reduce integration time from months to days
- AI can help reduce overprovisioned access and access review volume by 67%
More importantly, your teams stop firefighting and start governing—without scaling headcount. Move from manual controls to intelligent autonomy, delivering scale, speed and precision.
How to Get Started with Lumos
If you're leading an IGA modernization effort, focus on AI-powered platforms that can:
- Discover all identities—human and non-human—and connect to all your apps.
- Analyze access patterns, detect anomalous behavior and recommend optimum policies, with explainable risk scoring and contextual reasoning.
- Act across provisioning, review, and remediation workflows without tickets or manual effort.
- Learn from feedback and continuously refine policies to keep up with your organizational shift.
This is the new governance lifecycle: discover → analyze → act → learn.
And AI agents sit at the center of it. Stop guessing and get back to governing.
Want to learn more and get started? Take a demo.
