Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

Digital identities are under siege. The latest Osterman Research white paper offers a sobering discrepancy between maturity and reality. The study surveyed 126 US based professionals responsible for identity security across organizations with more than 500 employees. The findings reveal a growing gap between perceived maturity and actual readiness to combat identity-led threats.

AI is no longer just a future concern. It is deeply embedded in both offense and defense. With new exploits surfacing, massive open-source model use, and attackers growing more creative, the risks we warned about are now very real.

When I talk to customers about AI these days, I usually get two very different reactions. Some lean forward, excited about the promise: fewer alerts, faster response, maybe even lights-out SOC operations someday. Others lean back, uneasy about the risks: does this mean attackers will be able to run thousands of hacks at once, automatically? The truth is, both reactions are justified. We are at the start of a shift toward agentic AI. This is not the same as today’s AI copilots that wait for prompts.

With hybrid work, cloud applications, and distributed teams now the standard, organizations face a critical challenge: how to deliver secure, seamless access to both cloud-hosted and private applications without relying on outdated remote user VPNs or complex hardware.

The hybrid working model has blurred the traditional limit of corporate networks. With users accessing critical resources from remote locations, unmanaged networks and personal devices, attack surfaces have increased exponentially. This demands a cutting-edge, comprehensive and adaptive approach to security. A recent example in January 2025 makes this clear: a vulnerability in SimpleHelp - a remote access tool - let attackers compromise corporate endpoints and move laterally across the network.