What is Identity as a Service? The Authentication Solution That Needs an IGA Layer

The IDaaS Promise and Reality

The shift to cloud and remote work has driven explosive growth in Identity as a Service (IDaaS) adoption. The market is expanding from $7 billion to a projected $21.4 billion by 2028, reflecting a 25% compound annual growth rate. Organizations turn to IDaaS platforms to solve urgent authentication challenges: enabling secure single sign-on across dozens of SaaS applications, enforcing multi-factor authentication for remote workers, and managing basic user provisioning without maintaining on-premises infrastructure.

IDaaS excels at what it was designed to do. It answers the critical question “should this user log in?” efficiently and securely. For many organizations, implementing IDaaS represents a significant modernization milestone, replacing outdated directory services and fragmented authentication systems with streamlined cloud platforms.

But authentication is only the first step. Once users are in, a new set of questions emerges: Should they have this level of access? Is their access still appropriate six months later? Do they hold conflicting permissions that violate compliance policies? Can we prove to auditors why each person has the access they do? These are governance questions, and most IDaaS platforms weren’t built to answer them.

What Is Identity as a Service?

Identity as a Service (IDaaS) is a cloud-based solutions that manages user authentication and access to applications without requiring on-premises infrastructure. IDaaS solutions provide centralized identity management, enabling users to securely access multiple applications through single sign-on while IT teams manage authentication policies, user directories, and basic provisioning from a unified console.

At its core, IDaaS modernizes how organizations handle the authentication layer of identity management. Major providers like Okta, Microsoft Entra ID, and Ping Identity have built comprehensive platforms that address the immediate needs of cloud-first enterprises: seamless user login experiences, strong authentication enforcement, and the ability to quickly onboard new SaaS applications without deploying additional hardware or software.

IDaaS platforms excel at answering the fundamental question “should this user log in?” They verify identity, enforce authentication policies, and grant initial access efficiently. For organizations migrating to the cloud or supporting distributed workforces, this represents a critical foundation for modern identity management.

What are Core IDaaS Capabilities?

Single Sign-On (SSO): Users authenticate once and gain access to multiple applications, eliminating password fatigue and reducing credential exposure.

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): Adds verification layers beyond passwords through mobile apps, biometrics, or hardware tokens.

Directory Services: Centralized user identity storage synchronized with Active Directory or HR systems.

Basic Provisioning and Deprovisioning: Automated creation and deletion of user accounts across connected applications.

Conditional Access Policies: Risk-based controls that evaluate authentication signals like device trust, location, IP address, and credential health to determine how and when users can sign in.

These capabilities create the secure entry point that modern organizations require. However, ensuring access remains appropriate over time, and proving it to auditors, requires different tools.

The Governance Gap in Identity as a Service

IDaaS platforms deliver strong authentication, but they typically stop short of continuous governance. The distinction matters because compliance frameworks and security best practices demand more than initial access control. They require ongoing validation that access remains appropriate, documented justification for entitlements, and proactive prevention of risky access combinations. This is where organizations discover systematic gaps in their identity strategies.

Access Certification Gap

IDaaS platforms provision access but don’t ensure the right people have the right access over time. As employees change roles or take on new responsibilities, access rights accumulate without systematic review. IDaaS solutions lack built-in certification workflows, leaving organizations unable to conduct regular access reviews at scale. When auditors ask for evidence that current access is appropriate, organizations relying solely on IDaaS struggle to demonstrate anything beyond authentication logs.

Separation of Duties Gap

Compliance frameworks like SOX, GDPR, NIS2, and DORA explicitly require separation of duties (SoD) controls. These controls prevent users from holding conflicting permissions that could enable fraud or policy violations. For example, the same person shouldn’t be able to both initiate and approve financial transactions.

IDaaS platforms don’t include SoD policy engines. They can’t detect toxic access combinations across multiple systems, and they can’t prevent users from requesting conflicting permissions. Without automated SoD enforcement, organizations rely on manual checks that are slow, error-prone, and difficult to maintain as access complexity grows.

Fine-Grained Entitlement Gap

Authentication and authorization are fundamentally different challenges. IDaaS platforms excel at authentication (proving who you are), but they provide limited visibility into authorization (what you can do once you’re in). Being able to log into an application doesn’t reveal whether someone has read-only access or administrative privileges, whether they can view all records or only specific subsets, or whether their permissions align with business policies.

This lack of business context makes access decisions difficult. Approvers reviewing access requests often don’t have enough information to make informed decisions. They see “access to Salesforce” without understanding whether that means viewing leads or deleting entire accounts.

Audit Readiness Gap

When auditors arrive, they don’t ask “can users authenticate?” They ask deeper questions: Why does this person have this access? Who approved it? When was it last reviewed? What business justification supports this entitlement? Has this access combination been evaluated for compliance risks?

Authentication logs answer none of these questions. IDaaS platforms record login events, but compliance documentation requires approval trails, business justifications, policy enforcement records, and evidence of regular reviews. The gap between what IDaaS provides and what auditors need creates significant compliance risk.

Policy-Based Governance Gap

IDaaS platforms typically handle access through manual requests and approvals. This reactive approach works for initial provisioning but doesn’t scale to continuous governance. Organizations need automated policy enforcement, proactive controls that prevent violations before they occur, and governance frameworks that align access with organizational structure.

What Is Identity Governance and Administration (IGA)?

Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) provides the continuous oversight and policy enforcement that sits above the authentication layer. Where IDaaS focuses on getting users in securely, IGA ensures that access remains appropriate throughout the identity lifecycle. It’s not a replacement for IDaaS but a complementary governance layer that addresses the compliance, risk management, and operational challenges that authentication platforms alone can’t solve.

IGA systems integrate with IDaaS platforms, directory services, and business applications to create a complete view of who has access to what across the organization. This unified perspective enables automated policy enforcement, systematic access reviews, and audit-ready documentation that compliance frameworks require.

IGA Capabilities That Complete Your Identity Strategy

Access Certification and Recertification

IGA automates regular reviews of user access rights, routing certification campaigns to managers, system owners, and compliance teams. Rather than annual spreadsheet exercises, organizations conduct continuous validation that adapts as people and roles change.

Policy-Based Governance

IGA enforces automated business rules that align access with organizational policies. When someone changes roles, policies automatically adjust their entitlements. When requests violate defined rules, the system prevents provisioning or triggers exception workflows with required justifications.

Role-Based and Attribute-Based Access Control

IGA creates governance structures that reflect how your organization actually works. Roles capture common access patterns based on job functions, while attributes enable context-aware decisions. Approvers see business context, not just technical permissions.

Separation of Duties Enforcement

IGA continuously monitors for toxic access combinations that violate compliance policies. The system prevents conflicting permissions and alerts governance teams when violations occur. Every SoD decision is recorded with justification, creating the audit trail that regulatory frameworks like SOX, ISO27001, and GDPR demand.

Compliance Automation and Reporting

IGA produces audit-ready reports documenting who has access, why they have it, who approved it, and when it was last reviewed. These reports align with regulatory requirements, reducing compliance preparation burden.

When Does Your Organization Need IGA?

Most organizations implement IDaaS first and discover the need for governance later. Recognizing the triggers early helps you plan a complete identity strategy rather than reacting to audit findings or compliance failures. Three categories of pressure typically drive IGA adoption: compliance and audit pressure, operational complexity, and gaps in security posture.

Compliance and Audit Pressure

Audit findings about excessive privileges, lack of documented access reviews, or missing segregation of duties controls often provide the first clear signal that governance gaps exist. As regulatory requirements intensify under frameworks like GDPR, NIS2, DORA, and SOX, organizations face increasing scrutiny of their identity and access management practices.

Industry-specific mandates add another layer of complexity. Healthcare organizations must demonstrate HIPAA compliance. Financial services firms face PCI DSS requirements for systems handling payment data. Board members and executives increasingly demand access governance reporting that proves the organization maintains appropriate controls over sensitive data and systems.

Operational Complexity

As SaaS adoption accelerates, tracking who has access to what becomes exponentially harder. The average enterprise now manages many applications. Add the rapid growth of non-human identities like service accounts, API keys, bots, and AI agents, and the identity landscape becomes difficult to govern through manual processes alone.

Organizational changes compound the challenge. Mergers, acquisitions, restructuring, and high contractor turnover create constant flux in who needs access to which systems. Manual access review processes that might work for 500 employees break down entirely at 5,000 employees across multiple business units and geographies.

Security Posture Gaps

Privilege creep represents one of the most common security risks in identity management. Users accumulate access over time as they change roles, join projects, or request temporary permissions that become permanent. Orphaned accounts from departed employees or contractors remain active, creating unnecessary risk.

Without automated governance, implementing least privilege becomes nearly impossible. Organizations struggle to identify and revoke excessive permissions. Toxic access combinations go undetected until an audit or security incident forces visibility. The inability to quickly revoke all access during offboarding leaves windows of exposure that attackers can exploit.

If you recognize multiple triggers across these categories, your organization likely needs governance capabilities.

IDaaS platforms represent a critical foundation for modern identity management, solving authentication challenges efficiently and enabling secure access at scale. These investments remain valuable. The governance gap doesn’t diminish what IDaaS accomplishes. It highlights that authentication is one part of a complete identity strategy.

Organizations implementing IGA alongside existing IDaaS platforms gain continuous validation that access remains appropriate, automated policy enforcement that prevents compliance violations, and audit-ready documentation that regulators demand. Authentication gets users in. Governance keeps access appropriate.

The path forward combines IDaaS authentication strengths with IGA continuous governance capabilities. Learn more about how Omada Identity Cloud provides comprehensive identity governance that complements your existing authentication infrastructure, or explore the IdentityPROCESS+ framework for a structured approach to IGA implementation.