Identity is the security perimeter. It governs who gets access, how they get it, and what they can do once inside. If your organization isn’t approaching security through that lens, you’re exposing your organization to unnecessary risk.
Defining identity security posture management (ISPM)
Identity security posture Management (ISPM) is emerging as a new strategic cybersecurity discipline that enables organizations to manage risk, enforce policy, and strengthen compliance across increasingly complex environments. ISPM provides visibility, context, and continuous monitoring of identity-related risk across hybrid environments.
More than a feature or a product, ISPM is a strategy. It gives organizations continuous visibility into identity-related risk, automates policy enforcement, and empowers security teams to make smarter, faster decisions about who should have access and why.
Identity is no longer just part of the security conversation. It is the conversation.
The reality is simple: the vast majority of breaches today are identity-driven. The 2025 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report found that credential abuse was the most common vector in unauthorized breaches, appearing in 22% of all reported breaches last year. Likewise, phishing attacks attempting to steal credentials were present in 16% of breaches.
And those are just the most frequently reported threat vectors. Privilege escalation, policy misconfigurations, and orphaned accounts are all identity-related risks that can endanger organizations. Yet many organizations still rely on siloed tools and reactive processes to manage that risk.
Attackers exploit the cracks between governance, access, and authentication. ISPM closes those gaps by unifying identity intelligence, policy controls, and risk analytics into a continuous posture management approach.
With ISPM, security teams can:
- Eliminate hidden identity risk before it becomes a breach
- Automate access policy enforcement and audit readiness
- Detect abnormal behavior and misconfigurations early
- Strengthen Zero Trust alignment by continuously validating access
ISPM is the natural evolution of IGA
ISPM represents the next step in the evolution of identity governance. Traditional Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) provides the foundation: centralizing visibility into user entitlements, enforcing access policies, and ensuring compliance through certifications and reporting.
When combined with access management and authentication, ISPM extends these governance capabilities into a continuous, proactive model. It adds real-time monitoring of identity activity, automated risk posture scoring, and intelligent enforcement across environments. The result is a closed loop of governance, access, and authentication that allows organizations to not only govern identities but also actively reduce risk and strengthen security posture.
ISPM addresses the most common identity-related attack vectors that cybercriminals exploit. By proactively identifying risks across accounts, entitlements, and access policies, ISPM helps organizations close gaps before attackers can take advantage.
Credential abuse
Attackers take advantage of weak, stolen, or reused credentials. ISPM enforces stronger authentication and reduces exposure from compromised passwords.
Privilege escalation
Excessive or unmonitored entitlements give attackers paths to higher-level access. ISPM identifies risky privileges and enforces least-privilege principles.
Policy misconfigurations
Misapplied or overly permissive policies create exploitable gaps. ISPM detects configuration drift and enforces consistent access policies.
Shadow IT / shadow access
Unapproved applications and hidden accounts bypass governance. ISPM brings these into visibility and ensures they follow security controls.
Orphaned accounts
Inactive or abandoned accounts remain open doors for attackers. ISPM detects and eliminates orphaned accounts before they can be abused.
Excessive entitlements
Users often retain access they no longer need as roles change. ISPM reviews entitlements, flags unnecessary access, and rightsizes permissions.
Third-party access
Vendors and contractors often connect with elevated privileges. ISPM monitors external accounts, validates their necessity, and removes access when no longer required.
The identity landscape has become too sprawling, fragmented, and complex for traditional controls to manage effectively. As organizations adopt more cloud services, bring in third-party users, and automate business processes, the number of identities grows—and so do the risks. ISPM addresses the operational and security blind spots that result from this growth. These include:
- Identity sprawl is the accelerated growth of human, device, service, and machine accounts. More identities leads to overlapping, orphaned, and shadow accounts that attackers can exploit. Over half (57%) of organizations consider managing identity sprawl a major focus,2 highlighting its significance in the current security landscape.
- Misconfigurations and inconsistent policies, which make it harder to enforce access controls and increase the likelihood of privilege misuse. The prevalence of hybrid environments (reported by 70% of organizations1) further complicates identity policy enforcement across different systems.
- Unmanaged entitlements, which allow users to retain access that no longer reflect their responsibilities. When access is not regularly reviewed or based on least privilege principles, unmanaged entitlements increase the chance of excessive or toxic combinations going unnoticed. These gaps can directly contribute to security incidents.
- Limited visibility into privileged or high-risk accounts, which slows detection of malicious activity and insider threats. More than 20% of organizations estimated that identity-related breaches cost them over $10 million. In total, 44% said these breaches were more expensive than general data breaches.1
- Shadow IT, where business units or employees adopt unauthorized applications or systems outside the purview of IT. These unsanctioned technologies often lack proper security oversight, increasing the risk of data exposure, misconfigurations, and compliance violations.
These issues are not just inconvenient. They create real exposure. Without a clear understanding of who has access to what, and whether that access is appropriate, organizations face delays during audits, struggle to meet compliance mandates, and fall short of Zero Trust goals. Over-provisioned accounts, toxic access combinations, and delayed incident response can result in breaches, penalties, and loss of public trust.
ISPM gives security teams the visibility and context they need to address these growing challenges and reduce the attack surface. It shifts identity management from reactive cleanup to proactive risk reduction, bringing identity risk under control across cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments.
SPM is not a single tool or dashboard. It is a strategic approach built on a foundation of integrated identity security technologies. These capabilities must work together to continuously evaluate identity posture, enforce policy, and guide remediation. Organizations seeking to implement ISPM should ensure they have the following:
Identity governance and administration
Core capabilities such as policy enforcement, access certification, role management, and lifecycle controls.
Identity discovery and visibility
Tools to inventory users, entitlements, and accounts across cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments.
Monitoring and analytics
Advanced analytics to track behavior, detect anomalies, and prioritize identity-related risks.
Access management and strong authentication
Context-aware access policies, multi-factor authentication, and modern authentication methods such as passwordless and biometric login.
Privileged access oversight
Capabilities to discover, monitor, and govern privileged and high-risk accounts.
SaaS and shadow IT protection
Visibility into SaaS app usage and mechanisms to control unauthorized or unmanaged access.
Integration across identity tools
A unified architecture or open integration framework to connect these capabilities to ensure continuous visibility and policy enforcement.
Real-world waysExample scenarios where ISPM delivers immediate value:
Managing third-party risks
Monitor and control vendor and contractor access to minimize third-party exposure.
Privileged access and account management
Identify risky privileged activity and enforce automated controls.
Govern application access
Ensure application access stays aligned with roles and policies through continuous oversight.
ISPM operationalizes Zero Trust by turning its core principles into continuous automated controls across identities, access, and authentication.
Continuous verification
ISPM validates identities in real time, monitoring entitlements and authentication events to confirm users remain trustworthy throughout their sessions.
Least privilege enforcement
ISPM ensures users retain only the access they need, automatically adjusting or removing entitlements that exceed policy or increase risk.
Dynamic access policies
ISPM applies adaptive policies based on context and risk posture, allowing or restricting access as conditions change.
Zero Trust is a security framework that assumes no user or system should be trusted by default, even inside the network. It requires continuous verification of identity, strict access controls, and least-privilege enforcement. If Zero Trust is the goal, then ISPM a method to get there. ISPM operationalizes Zero Trust by providing the visibility, analytics, and enforcement capabilities needed to evaluate and improve identity-related controls over time.
RSA believes effective ISPM starts with identity governance. RSA Governance & Lifecycle provides the identity governance and administration (IGA) capabilities organizations need to gain full visibility into its identities, conduct lifecycle management, maintain policy control, and understand their identity posture.
But governance doesn’t stand alone. To fully secure identity, organizations need to understand how users access systems and how users are authenticated, especially across hybrid and cloud environments. That’s why RSA ID Plus provides modern authentication and access management across cloud, hybrid, and on-prem environments that tie directly into posture management decisions.
Together, RSA Governance & Lifecycle and ID Plus form the foundation of the RSA Unified Identity Platform (UIP), a purpose-built framework that delivers ISPM at scale.
Delivering ISPM at scale
RSA is not waiting for the market to define ISPM. We’re defining it. And we’re already delivering on it. Together, RSA Governance & Lifecycle and ID Plus form the foundation of the RSA Unified Identity Platform (UIP), a purpose-built framework that delivers ISPM at scale.
RSA Governance & Lifecycle and ID Plus work together to give organizations end-to-end visibility and control over identity. Governance & Lifecycle manages the full identity lifecycle, including provisioning, entitlements, role changes, and continuous compliance, ensuring that access is appropriate and aligned with business policies. ID Plus then enforces secure access in real time with strong authentication, context-aware controls, and modern passwordless options.
Get the ISPM framework
The RSA report Defining Identity Security Posture Management outlines a bold, actionable framework for identity-first security. The report details the eight core pillars of ISPM, including reducing the identity risk surface, controlling privileged access, and detecting shadow access.
What is Identity Security Posture Management (ISPM)?
Identity Security Posture Management (ISPM) is a new cybersecurity approach that continuously assesses and improves identity-related risk across environments. It helps organizations identify gaps in visibility, governance, and control, and supports organizations moving closer to Zero Trust.
Why is ISPM important for Zero Trust security?
Zero Trust requires strict identity verification at every layer. ISPM helps organizations advance toward Zero Trust by providing the visibility, analytics, and enforcement capabilities needed to evaluate and improve identity-related controls over time.
Does ISPM replace IGA and PAM?
No. ISPM does not replace these solutions, it amplifies them. Governance defines who should have access. PAM controls privileged access. ISPM ties everything together, identifies posture gaps across systems, and gives organizations confidence that their identity environment is secure and compliant.
How does ISPM help with compliance and audit readiness?
ISPM continuously monitors accounts, entitlements, and policies against internal standards and regulatory requirements. It provides centralized reporting and dashboards that make it easier to demonstrate compliance, reduce manual audit effort, and prove that controls are working. This proactive approach helps organizations stay audit-ready year-round instead of scrambling before reviews.
