By Shashwat Sehgal, CEO and Co-founder, P0 Security

In today's cloud-native environment, ensuring strict access controls-defining who can access what and when-is more critical than ever, especially as we head into 2025.

The rapid growth of cloud-native technologies has made it harder to control access, as the cloud is now used not only by human users but also by non-human identities (NHIs), introducing more complex access pathways than traditional applications ever did.

Traditional access governance and identity security tools were designed to govern human access to enterprise applications. But as cloud infrastructure and automation continue to evolve, the landscape has shifted and NHIs have become integral to IT environments. This explosion of NHIs has dramatically increased the number of access points to sensitive data and critical infrastructure, making traditional security methods inadequate for the complexity of modern cloud environments. 

Here are the top trends you can expect to see in Identity Management this coming year.

Responsibilities among security teams will shift

As organizations continue to embrace cloud technologies in 2025, the management of cloud identity governance will shift significantly. Currently, cloud security teams are filling the gap, but identity teams will need to assume a more prominent role. As such, the responsibilities will increasingly be shared among Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), cloud security, and identity teams, creating a more collaborative framework for governance. Moreover, the importance of educating organizations about the necessity for a more sophisticated approach to cloud identity governance will be paramount. Companies that invest in managing identity governance holistically for human and non-human identities together will be better positioned to navigate the complexities of cybersecurity in a cloud-centric world.

The rise of credential exploitation

Credential exploitation continues to be a huge issue in identity security. With the burgeoning growth of non-human identities (NHIs), organizations face even greater risk in this area. Often left unattended and vulnerable to exploitation, NHIs open new pathways for credential exploitation and breaches of sensitive data and critical infrastructure. To prevent this and minimize the impact of breaches that do occur, it's imperative that security leaders take a holistic approach to identity security, instead of focusing on point solutions that only address narrow identity categories or risks.

Privilege access management will play a critical role

One of the top concerns of customers and business leaders is the importance of securing their critical infrastructure. The rise of cloud adoption and the proliferation of identities has made this even more challenging. Privileged Access Management, a market expected to grow to $4.07 billion in 2026 according to KuppingerCole, is crucial to reduce the risk of breaches, as well as insider threats. It's clear that legacy approaches are ineffective in today's cloud-native environment. Securing all forms of privileged access for both human and machine identities should not only be a business priority, but an integral part of an organization's safety and security policy.

To put it simply, securing identities is the key to preventing breaches - and legacy approaches to governing access to sensitive data and critical infrastructure no longer work due to the explosion of cloud-native technologies. It is now more difficult than ever to control who has access to what since the cloud can be accessed not just by human users, but by non-human identities, in many more ways than typical applications.

It is essential for IT and security professionals to monitor and manage both human and non-human identities to safeguard against potential breaches. Organizations that invest in integrated identity governance frameworks in 2025 will be better positioned to tackle the complex cybersecurity challenges of our cloud-driven world.

##

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shashwat Sehgal is the Co-Founder and CEO of P0 Security. He's spent most of his career building security and observability products for developers, DevOps, and security teams. Shashwat is passionate about solving the problem of cloud access security and helping security engineers control ‘who has access to what sensitive resources' in their clouds. He enjoys playing tennis, spending time with his family, teaching his son how to play chess, and geeking out on all things security.