IGA Cybersecurity Explained: Why Identity Governance Matters Now

Cybercrime has grown into a global economy of staggering scale. It is predicted to cost the world around $10.5T in 2025, which would rank it as the world’s third-largest economy if measured by GDP today. That scale underscores two realities: attackers are highly organized, and they exploit every gap left unprotected. At the center of most breaches is not simply malware or a firewall oversight, but compromised identity. When an attacker assumes the role of an employee, a bot, a service account, or a contractor, the consequences can be swift and severe. This blog explores how modern Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) helps organizations close those gaps, and how AI-assisted governance strengthens a zero-trust program to keep protection aligned with the pace of business.

Modern IGA Matters for Zero Trust

Traditional identity governance processes that rely heavily on manual reviews and ticket-driven provisioning don’t align with Zero Trust principles. Common weaknesses include:

1. Permission creep: Employees accumulate more access than they need, often keeping outdated entitlements even after their roles change.
2. Rubber-stamp reviews: Managers are asked to approve thousands of access items without context, turns critical risk checks into superficial “approve all” decisions.
3. Onboarding and offboarding delays: New employees wait too long for the right access, while departing employees often retain access longer than they should, leaving short but risky windows of exposure.

These gaps directly undermine Zero Trust by leaving access unverified, excessive, and outdated. The scale of the challenge is significant: Omada’s State of Identity Governance 2025 report shows that around 40% of organizations still operate with outdated IGA. The result is a landscape where attackers can easily take advantage of identity sprawl.

At its core, Zero Trust means treating every access attempt as untrusted, requiring explicit verification, and granting only the minimum permissions needed. Modern Identity Governance and Administration makes those principles practical. When someone joins, changes roles, or leaves, their access is automatically adjusted to reflect their current responsibilities instead of lingering with outdated or overly broad permissions. In today’s environment, where identities extend across SaaS applications, on-prem systems, cloud workloads, and automated processes, identity becomes the real-time control plane of security. Governance keeps that plane consistent and trustworthy, coherent across systems, auditable for compliance, and continuously right-sized to organizational needs.

But even with these safeguards in place, the question remains: what happens when an identity is compromised? This is where the concept of limiting the blast radius becomes critical, and where modern IGA proves its value.

Limiting the Blast Radius

Imagine a finance employee who shifts into a procurement role but retains access to sensitive financial systems. If that account is compromised, the attacker inherits both sets of permissions, instantly expanding their reach and magnifying the potential blast radius of the breach. Modern IGA prevents this by automatically removing outdated access as roles change, keeping entitlements tightly aligned with current responsibilities.

The above example matters because today’s cybercriminal organizations operate with the sophistication of legitimate enterprises. They recruit specialists, train new members, invest in custom tooling, and collaborate through structured marketplaces where stolen data and access are traded like commodities. With this level of professionalism, attackers consistently target the most effective entry point: identities. A single compromised identity, whether belonging to an employee, contractor, or service account, can open the door to critical systems, and excessive or outdated permissions act as fuel that enlarges the blast radius of an attack.

By enforcing least privilege, automating entitlement adjustments, and ensuring access stays current, modern IGA drastically reduces the blast radius of any breach. Even if an identity is compromised, its permissions are limited to what is strictly necessary, transforming what might have been an enterprise-wide incident into a contained, manageable event.

Achieving that level of precision, however, requires more than traditional tools. It calls for real-time analysis, constant adaptation, and decisions that scale with the pace of business. This is why AI has become an essential force multiplier for modern IGA.

AI in Modern IGA Strengthens Zero Trust

Artificial intelligence has become a critical accelerator for identity governance, and its impact is most visible in how it strengthens Zero Trust. Zero Trust depends on continuous verification and the strict enforcement of least privilege: two objectives that quickly overwhelm manual processes at enterprise scale. AI enables organizations to reach that standard with speed and precision.

One area where AI has transformed IGA is in access decisions. Traditional reviews often force managers to wade through endless lists of entitlements without context, which leads to rubber-stamp approvals AI cuts through this noise by analyzing usage patterns, peer comparisons, and historical request data to deliver clear, evidence-based recommendations. Instead of guessing, reviewers are equipped with actionable, targeted, insight which ensures that verification is explicit and rooted in evidence. This directly supports the Zero Trust principle of treating every access attempt as untrusted until proven otherwise.

AI also strengthens the enforcement of least privilege. By identifying common access patterns and grouping them into clean, role-based bundles, AI reduces the number of ad hoc entitlements scattered across the enterprise This not only minimizes permission creep but also slams shut one of the biggest doors attackers try to walk through: excessive privileges that grant far more authority than a role requires.

Continuous monitoring is another dimension where AI sharpens governance. Rather than limiting reviews to quarterly or annual campaigns AI works in real time, flagging anomalies such as accounts with entitlements that deviate from peer norms or permissions that are never used. By surfacing these risks proactively, AI ensures that the control plane of identity remains coherent, trustworthy, and aligned with Zero Trust’s demand for constant vigilance.

For all its advantages, AI does not remove the need for accountability. Zero Trust still depends on people making informed, responsible decisions. AI-driven IGA must therefore operate under human oversight. Automation and recommendations should accelerate routine approvals, while higher-risk actions, such as policy changes or privileged exceptions, must remain in the hands of an accountable individual. In this way, AI strengthens Zero Trust by handling the complexity at scale, while people retain control over the decisions that truly matter.

From Roadblock to Catalyst: Modern IGA Powers the Business

One of the most persistent myths is that identity governance slows business. The reality is the opposite: when done right, modern IGA accelerates it. Automated provisioning and well-structured roles shorten the time it takes for employees and contractors to be productive. Intelligent reviews reduce the compliance burden from months of preparation to a process that is both manageable and risk-focused. At the same time, tightly enforced least privilege ensures that when incidents occur, their impact is limited to a flicker instead of a fire.

Taken together, these capabilities show why modern IGA is not just an administrative layer but a true security cornerstone. It brings Zero Trust principles to life in daily operations: verifying every request explicitly, cutting back excessive access, and minimizing the blast radius when identities are compromised. With AI now amplifying governance, organizations can achieve these outcomes at the scale and speed today’s threat landscape demands.

The result is stronger protection, leaner operations, and a foundation that supports digital transformation rather than slowing it down. Identity governance has moved beyond being seen as a barrier. it is now a catalyst for agility and resilience, and a defining part of how security leaders prepare their organizations for the future.

For more on how Omada sees this challenge and the path forward, listen to the full podcast ‘IGA Cybersecurity Explained | Identity Governance & Cyber Threats’ for deeper insights into how identity governance underpins modern security and Zero Trust.