Identity Security in 2025: A Comprehensive Guide

## Category Overview ### Introduction Identity is the primary security perimeter in a world where users, devices, and workloads constantly cross organizational boundaries. Compromised credentials remain the top breach vector, making identity governance and detection capabilities essential. In 2025, identity security extends beyond human users: machine identities—APIs, bots, and workloads—now vastly outnumber people, creating new governance and risk challenges. ## Quarterly Trends & News | Theme | Update | |---|---| | **Passkeys reach critical mass** | Enterprises accelerate adoption of passkeys as phishing-resistant alternatives to passwords. | | **Machine identity explosion** | Service accounts and API keys outnumber human users many times over, exposing new attack surfaces. | | **Identity Threat Detection & Response** | ITDR emerges as a must-have capability to monitor suspicious authentication and privilege escalation. | | **Passwordless momentum** | Organizations move away from SMS and OTP toward biometrics and cryptographic authenticators. | | **AI-driven identity attacks** | Deepfakes, voice clones, and AI-enhanced phishing challenge traditional MFA methods. | ## Common Terms & Definitions | Term | Definition | |---|---| | **Passkeys** | Cryptographic credentials that replace passwords, resistant to phishing and replay. | | **ITDR (Identity Threat Detection & Response)** | Solutions that monitor and respond to identity-based anomalies across IdPs and directories. | | **Non-Human Identity (NHI)** | Accounts, tokens, and certificates used by machines, workloads, or services. | | **JIT Access** | Privilege granted only when needed, automatically revoked when not in use. | | **Federation** | Trust relationships that enable SSO across multiple organizations or systems. |