Identity, AI and Zero Trust: Cybersecurity Perspectives from Infosecurity Europe, Black Hat USA and it-sa Expo & Congress
Topics: Non-Human Identity, Privileged Access Management, Least privilege access, AI threat detection, Secrets sprawl
Pages: 9
Company: Keeper Security
In 2025, Keeper Security surveyed more than 370 cybersecurity professionals at three leading global conferences – Infosecurity Europe in London, Black Hat USA in Las Vegas and it-sa in Nuremberg. Despite differences in geography, regulation and representative organizational size, the findings reveal a shared reality: identity is the new perimeter.
Across Europe and North America, identity has become the defining battleground for cybersecurity professionals. As organizations expand into hybrid, multi-cloud and AI-enabled environments, the number of digital identities has proliferated. Every user, device and service account represents a potential entry point, and each unmanaged credential increases risk – with the number of non-human identities growing exponentially.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping this landscape on both sides of the fight. Attackers are using AI to automate phishing, deepfake impersonations, ransomware and privilege escalation, while defenders are turning to AI-driven identity validation and behavioral analytics to strengthen authentication and detect anomalies. The pace of this evolution is accelerating, and organizations must adapt quickly.
Security leaders understand the path forward: strengthen privileged access controls, modernize authentication and turn zero trust from strategy into practice. Yet progress is often slowed by complexity, competing priorities and lack of executive alignment. The result is an execution gap between awareness and action, and threat actors are exploiting it with speed and precision.
While the global security community has embraced identity-first principles, implementation remains uneven. Closing this gap will determine which organizations can truly achieve resilience against modern threats.
