To help companies remain competitive amidst changing markets, the Solutions Review editors are exploring how an empathy-first approach to AI risk management can transform a company’s ability to adopt and utilize AI technology successfully.

Implementing artificial intelligence (AI) into your company is as much about integrating the technology itself as managing the potential ripple effects it could have on the business. As the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) explains, as many benefits as AI can provide—economic growth, improved productivity, boosted agility, etc.—it can also “pose risks that can negatively impact individuals, groups, organizations, communities, society, the environment, and the planet.” That’s where the value of an AI Risk Management Framework comes into play.

If these frameworks aim “to improve the ability to incorporate trustworthiness considerations into the design, development, use, and evaluation of AI products, services, and systems,” as the NIST says, empathy must be an essential part of any risk management strategy. With that in mind, this article will examine the crucial role AI risk management plays in today’s evolving world, specifically focusing on how valuable an empathetic AI (EAI) policy is to an AI risk management framework.

Addressing the Empathy Gap in Current AI Risk Frameworks

If you didn’t already know, the most widely adopted and recognized AI risk framework is the NIST AI Risk Management Framework (AI RMF), released in January 2023. However, much has changed in the years since, as few as they are. According to a report McKinsey & Company released in 2025, “78 percent of respondents say their organizations use AI in at least one business function, up from 72 percent in early 2024 and 55 percent a year earlier.” That’s a significant increase since the NIST released their AI RMF, and the landscape has changed.

While the NIST’s AI RMF remains the standard, and rightfully so, public perception of what it means to have a risk management strategy for AI adoption seems to lack the proper focus on empathy. Most AI risk management frameworks being deployed treat risks as quantifiable variables that can be addressed through technical controls and governance processes. That approach makes sense, since companies require a methodology that can be replicated and deployed as easily as possible. However, it can also create what you might call an “empathy gap,” resulting in AI systems failing to account for the emotional, contextual, and relational dimensions of human decision-making.

Consider the case of AI-powered customer service systems that function correctly but cause brand damage by failing to deliver the correct tone during customer interactions. While these systems could technically pass a traditional risk assessment, they fail in practice, harming consumers, users, and the company. There have been studies done on AI’s ability (or lack thereof) to utilize empathy in various settings, including medical care, for example, and most of the findings demonstrate that, despite AI’s growing capabilities, it cannot replicate the experienced empathy humans use on a daily basis.

Consequently, empathy must be a top priority in developing or deploying an AI risk management framework. With an EAI mindset, we believe companies can transform how they create and use AI technologies to maximize business potential and support their human workers. It’s like the NIST’s framework says: “AI risks–and benefits–can emerge from the interplay of technical aspects combined with societal factors related to how a system is used, its interactions with other AI systems, who operates it, and the social context in which it is deployed.”

The Business Case for Empathetic AI Risk Management

Unlike traditional AI metrics that focus on speed or accuracy, empathetic AI focuses on sticky, differentiated value propositions that are inherently difficult for competitors to replicate because they require deep integration of emotional intelligence, cultural sensitivity, and contextual awareness across entire product ecosystems. To get specific, the business case for empathetic AI in risk management rests on the premise that traditional risk frameworks catastrophically underestimate human-centric failure modes by treating users as rational actors rather than complex emotional beings.

An EAI-centric risk management strategy recognizes that the most disruptive AI failures often emerge not from technical malfunctions but from misaligned human-AI interactions where systems fail to understand user emotional states, cultural contexts, or unstated needs. By shifting to an empathy-first approach, companies can move their risk assessment from purely probabilistic models toward dynamic, relationship-aware frameworks that can predict and even prevent the social and reputational damages that emerge when AI systems inadvertently cross a line.

A study from 2021 explains, “AI lacks a helping intention towards another person as the basis of its attentional selection, because it does not have the appropriate motivational and inferential structure.” That lack does not mean AI is incapable of being helpful or acting empathetically. However, it does necessitate that humans adopt an empathy-first mindset when designing AI or giving it directions. Failing to do so can result in empathy failures that generate negative publicity that affects market capitalization, far exceeding the technical infrastructure investments.

EAI risk management can help your brand avoid that negativity by providing early warning systems that the technology and its users identify by continuously monitoring emotional sentiment, cultural alignment, and relationship quality metrics that traditional risk systems ignore entirely.

These AI risk management frameworks take time and investment, requiring companies to collect extensive training data about human emotional states, cultural norms, and psychological vulnerabilities—information that presents massive privacy and security risks. Yet, even with the complexity, an EAI risk management strategy is still worth exploring, especially since it means getting in “on the ground floor” for an emerging methodology already sending ripples throughout the enterprise technology marketplace.

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The editors at Solutions Review summarize some of the most significant ways AI has impacted cybersecurity jobs, hiring, skillsets, and more.

Regardless of your job title or industry, artificial intelligence (AI) has likely impacted your company’s internal and external processes. This can be especially true for cybersecurity professionals, as AI has changed how threat actors plan and execute attacks and introduced new ways to combat potential and active threats. What is less clear is the specific impact AI has had on cybersecurity and whether these professionals have cause for concern.

As AI is integrated into cybersecurity operations at unprecedented levels, the form and function of a company’s cyber team will continue to undergo rapid changes. To keep track of those changes, the Solutions Review editors have outlined some of the primary ways AI has changed cybersecurity, what professionals can do to remain agile during those evolutions, and what the future may hold for them and the technologies they use.

Note: These insights were informed through web research using advanced scraping techniques and generative AI tools. Solutions Review editors use a unique multi-prompt approach to extract targeted knowledge and optimize content for relevance and utility.

How Has AI Changed the Cybersecurity Workforce?

In just a few years, the impact of AI on cybersecurity has dramatically restructured the industry’s roles, responsibilities, and required skill sets. This transformation has been freeing for many, as AI technologies have streamlined user workloads and empowered teams to focus on more specialized, high-value tasks and projects. For comparison’s sake, consider how the global market for AI in cybersecurity is estimated to reach a market value of USD 133.8 billion by 2030, compared to its reported USD 14.9 billion in 2021. These technologies are exploding, and they’re not going anywhere.

However, it’s not uncommon for cybersecurity professionals to feel uneasy about the rapid adoption of these technologies, as they have already proven capable of rendering some tasks and roles nearly obsolete. Here are some of the job roles and processes that have been impacted the most by AI:

AI-Powered Automation and Analysis

AI is reshaping how cybersecurity analysis happens by expanding its scope and compressing its cognitive overhead. Traditionally, analysis involved hours of log inspection, correlation of alerts, and cross-referencing of threat intel feeds. However, with AI, especially those using machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP), companies can automate those time-consuming processes to reduce alert fatigue and allow analysts to focus on the highest-risk threats.

For example, consider how leading cybersecurity platforms like Microsoft Defender XDR or IBM QRadar use ML models to correlate log entries and contextualize hundreds of alerts into real-time attack narratives. These streamlined analyses can dramatically reduce workloads by streamlining the process of identifying probable causes, unlocking cross-functional insights, and deploying that data to defend against future threats.

AI might be evolving what “analysis” looks like in cybersecurity, but it’s not ready to fully replace the necessity of human intervention. With AI handling the workload of detecting and aggregating information, human analysts will commit their time and expertise to interpretation, intent modeling, and escalation decision-making.

Threat Hunting and Adversarial Behavior Modeling

For years, traditional threat hunting has been hypothesis-driven: an analyst suspects that a particular tactic—e.g., credential stuffing or lateral movement—is occurring and searches logs or telemetry for artifacts that confirm or debunk that suspicion. However, this process is often narrow and human-biased, which is where AI can help. With its unsupervised learning and clustering capabilities, AI can identify and track patterns without preconceptions.

AI has essentially made “continuous hunting” possible. Some of the leading cybersecurity tools already use AI and behavioral models to proactively surface deviations, such as beaconing new domains or unusual SMB shares accessed at odd hours. Since AI can run 24/7, threat hunts no longer have to be ad hoc. It also adds a new data engineering dimension to threat hunting, as cybersecurity professionals are now encouraged (if not outright expected) to have AI-specific skills around curating telemetry, labeling behavior, and tuning features.

There’s no denying that AI is a double-edged sword for cybersecurity—cyber-criminals launched 36,000 malicious scans per second in 2024, according to Fortinet, and there’s been a 1,200 percent surge in phishing attacks since the rise of GenAI in late 2022. However, if companies want to keep up with the volume of attacks, they need the support that AI-boosted cybersecurity tools provide.

The Emergence of AI-Centric Cybersecurity Roles

The rise of AI in cybersecurity has not only affected existing workflows—it has spawned entirely new job categories, restructuring the profession around data-centric and model-centric competencies. These AI-centric cybersecurity roles represent a convergence of disciplines: traditional security, data science, ML operations (MLOps), and even behavioral psychology. Other roles like “blue team analysts” or “SOC engineers” are supplemented or outright replaced by titles like AI Threat Analyst, ML Security Engineer, and Adversarial ML Red Teamer.

It’s also possible that the future of cybersecurity jobs will start to resemble AI safety roles more than traditional InfoSec. This would involve an increased focus on validating agent boundaries, applying RLHF to constrain behavior, and building sandboxed testbeds for threat simulations. While there’s potential in that future, active and aspiring professionals should be wary, as that trend could result in a skills bar that leaves traditional network defenders behind unless they retrain aggressively.

The meta-trend here is becoming clear: Cybersecurity is evolving into a data science problem, and the workforce is shifting accordingly. The people who can reason statistically, build or probe AI systems, and think adversarially will define the next generation of cybersecurity leadership. Conventional roles will likely persist but may increasingly resemble operational support for AI-first tooling. Regardless, like LinkedIn’s Skills on the Rise report says, AI literacy will continue to be the skill that “professionals are prioritizing and companies are increasingly hiring for.”

Upskilling for the Future

AI isn’t a new technology, but it’s hitting the cybersecurity job market fast and hard. According to Cybersecurity Ventures, there will be 3.5 million unfilled jobs in the cybersecurity industry through 2025, a 350 percent growth from the one million open positions reported in 2013. If professionals want to keep their jobs—or future-proof themselves from potential displacement—they must equip themselves with AI-centric skills as soon as possible.

To reinforce that urgency, look at IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report, which shows that half of the organizations encountering security breaches also face high security staffing shortages. Even with 1 in 5 organizations using some form of generative AI, that skills gap remains a real challenge. Companies across industries need professionals fluent in adversarial and algorithmic logic, as that expertise will empower them to stay relevant regardless of the future. Mike Arrowsmith, the Chief Trust Officer at NinjaOne, puts it like this: “The best way to rein in AI risks is with more employee training. People have to know what to look out for, especially as AI technology evolves.”

One area professionals can focus on is soft skills. A recent study by Skiilify demonstrated that 94 percent of tech leaders believe soft skills—like curiosity, resilience, tolerance of ambiguity, perspective-taking, relationship-building, and humility—are more critical than ever. Soft skills can also help cybersecurity professionals understand how models can fail, how attackers exploit statistical assumptions, and how to wrap AI systems in resilient human oversight.

With Gartner predicting that, by 2028, “the adoption of GenAI will collapse the skills gap, removing the need for specialized education from 50 percent of entry-level cybersecurity positions,” it’s more crucial than ever for cybersecurity professionals to find and refine the skills that make them unique.

Will AI Replace Cybersecurity Professionals?

“AI won’t replace cybersecurity professionals, but it will transform the profession,” says Chris Dimitriadis, the Chief Global Strategy Officer at ISACA. The cybersecurity marketplace is already changing in response to AI tools and threats, but the transformation is far from finished. Even if the profession itself doesn’t go away, there’s a chance that current cybersecurity practitioners will be left behind as their job evolves into something they’re no longer equipped for.

In the longer term, AI will likely reshape cybersecurity professionals into decision supervisors. Their responsibilities will be less focused on making decisions and instead emphasize overseeing, calibrating, and intervening in AI-driven decision-making as necessary. It’s a subtler shift, but if the current workforce doesn’t upskill themselves in preparation, they may find that their expertise isn’t quite as valuable as it used to.

According to Sam Hector, Senior Strategy Leader at IBM Security, AI will “fundamentally shift the skills we require. Humans will focus more on strategy, analytics, and program improvements. This will necessitate continuous skills development of existing staff to pivot their roles around the evolving capabilities of AI.” The future of cybersecurity will be charted by practitioners who expand their perspective, prioritize their professional growth, engage with their peers, and collectively learn how to improve their AI-centric skills and literacy.

Want more insights like this? Register for Insight Jam, Solutions Review’s enterprise tech community, which enables human conversation on AI. You can gain access for free here!

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For World Password Day 2025, the editors at Solutions Review have compiled a list of comments from some of the leading industry experts.

As part of this year’s World Password Day, we called for the industry’s best and brightest in Identity and Access Management and the broader cybersecurity market to share best practices, predictions for the future of passwords, and personal anecdotes. The experts featured represent some of the top influencers, consultants, and solution providers with experience in these marketplaces, and each projection has been vetted for relevance and ability to add business value. The list is organized alphabetically by company name.

World Password Day Quotes from Industry Experts in 2025

Tim Eades, CEO and Co-Founder at Anetac

Arun Shrestha, CEO and Co-Founder at BeyondID

“Passwords are old news, and World Password Day—once a reminder of cybersecurity best practices—now underscores the importance of phasing out the very authentication method it once championed. With stolen credentials topping the breach origin charts and phishing attacks up 4,151 percent since the launch of ChatGPT, it’s clear that traditional passwords are no longer sufficient. Modern threats call for passwordless authentication—not just for stronger security, but for a frictionless user experience. It’s time to answer the phone.”

Read on for more.

“For decades, passwords have been the weak link in cybersecurity–outdated, overused, and increasingly ineffective. But now, organizations are making a clear shift. Multi-factor authentication and sign-in links have emerged as the primary methods for user authentication across the US, UK, and globally, overtaking passwords.

“This step change comes as over half of business and IT decision-makers report higher fraud attempts with username and password alone compared to other methods. We’re at a cybersecurity inflection point: passwords are no longer sufficient. Modern, layered authentication methods, such as facial biometrics, device recognition, or generated codes, are stepping in.

“Rather than forcing users to create longer, more complex passwords, it’s time for organizations to embrace a passwordless future where customers and employees can prove their identity conveniently and securely using their biometrics. This approach reduces risk, streamlines access, and meets the expectations of today’s digital-first users.”

Joel Burleson-Davis, Chief Technology Officer at Imprivata

“This World Password Day, it seems appropriate to shift the discussion from securing and managing passwords to the demise of the password. Passwords have served us well (sort of), and we’ve been long talking about ditching the traditional, complex password because of their burden and unintentional insecurity. However, with every second mattering in critical work, now more than ever, passwordless authentication has become business-critical.

“There are signs of good adoption of both passwordless strategies and shunning our old password-burdened ways in mobile devices, which are built with and extensively leverage facial recognition for security purposes, but some of our most critical technologies in our most critical sectors have been reluctant to implement similar solutions in their operations. As life- and mission-critical industries like healthcare and manufacturing cope with staffing challenges while being increasingly targeted, it’s time they reconsider access management and their relationship with the password paradigm.

“In healthcare, for example, and in particular, the delivery of health care, where a 17-character password is not practical for clinicians who are treating patients who need rapid and frequent access to Electronic Health Records (EHRs) in all kinds of situations. Entering a complex password for these users only creates barriers that delay patient care, eats up clinician time, and exacerbate burnout.

“Passwordless solutions, particularly biometrics-based ones, offer a tailored and frictionless experience that enables everyone from healthcare providers to manufacturing operators to maintain the highest security standards while empowering them to deliver timely, critical work without unnecessary barriers. I look forward to a World Password Day in the future that is full of cheering and celebration because we’ve finally released ourselves from the burden of putting memorized, complex strings into a little prompt box for the sake of security.”

Stephanie Schneider, Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst at LastPass

“World Password Day is a great reminder for every organization that identity access management is the foundation of effective company security. Abusing legitimate credentials is one of the easiest and most common ways hackers gain unauthorized access to systems. Given the rise of infostealers over the last few years, which frequently target credentials and other sensitive data to resell on underground marketplaces, acquiring these is easier than ever. Credentials and session cookies stolen from employees’ personal devices can be used to breach corporate networks.

“A key aspect of stealers is their heavy reliance on the ‘spray-and-prey’ tactic, rather than directly targeting corporate networks, they’re counting on individuals having weaker security on their personal devices and using their work credentials on personal devices. The time from infection via stealer malware to the time that information is posted to the dark web can be speedy, especially with automation tools. Organizations must monitor for exposed credentials and change credentials as quickly as possible to disrupt breaches and attacks before they can occur. In a world where hybrid work has blurred the lines between personal and professional devices, businesses can’t afford to be casual about credential management.

“Using strong, unique passwords is just the tip of the iceberg when protecting your identity access. Reusing passwords across services is still one of the most common mistakes employees make—and one of the easiest ways for attackers to gain access. Requiring multi-factor authentication (MFA) should be standard for every business account, and it is a good idea for personal accounts, too.

“This World Password Day, take a look at your access policies. Are you protecting your company or making it easier for someone else to break in?”

“Leverage passkeys as the primary authentication method whenever possible. While passkeys are not immune to cyber-attacks, they are significantly more secure and phishing-resistant because they are linked to a device or leverage biometric authentication. Plus, they’re a whole lot easier to manage than constantly juggling new password combinations.”

Anthony Cusimano, Solutions Director at Object First

“I believe the death of the password is just around the corner. Passwords are no longer a secure method of authentication and should not be treated as secure. So, I’ll share the advice I have taken up in the last year: use a password manager, app-based or browser-based (either works!).

“Password managers securely store your passwords in a locked vault and come with convenient browser extensions that autofill logins. They can also generate unique, complex passwords for every account. Many of these tools allow you to customize password requirements according to your preferences, including specifying length and incorporating symbols, numbers, and mixed case. Additionally, password managers can alert you to duplicate or weak passwords and often suggest optimal times for changes.

“The password alone is NOT a secure authentication method; that’s why I have given up trying to maximize their security and left the brainwork to someone else. It’s 2025—let an app do the password legwork for you, and here’s to hoping that passwords become a thing of the past sooner rather than later.”

Nicolas Fort, Director of Product Management at One Identity

“Passwords have come a long way, from punch-tape reels in 1961 to the world of multi-factor authentication and fingerprint identification we inhabit today. The next leap is already happening—passkeys tied to devices, one-time AI-generated tokens, and even blockchain-backed session receipts. It’s no accident that password technology is constantly evolving.

“Cyber-attacks are more frequent, threat actors have more sophisticated tools at their disposal, and as businesses continue to store more and more sensitive data online, regulators are rightly demanding that they keep up. The EU’s NIS2, the UK’s Cyber Resilience Act, DORA, HIPAA, and countless other rules and regulations now demand rock-solid control over user accounts at every touchpoint. That means audited sessions, behavioral analytics, rotating passwords, and just-in-time credentials—so that no matter how hard attackers try, there’s simply nothing there to steal.”

Drew Perry, Chief Innovation Officer at Ontinue

“As positive a day as World Password Day is, I look forward to the day it no longer exists or is at least renamed! With the rise of passkey support across major platforms and devices, we’re finally seeing a shift towards more secure and user-friendly authentication. Passkeys are cryptographic credentials that eliminate the need for passwords entirely, offering phishing-resistant, biometric-based access. It’s time we moved beyond passwords, which are too often reused, weak, or compromised. Simpler identity protection is needed so we, as humans, don’t just pick a random string of characters that we will never remember!”

“We have come a long way. Password manager adoption is rising, multi-factor authentication is available for most critical online services, and people are reusing the same passwords less. But still, hackers are succeeding in their attacks. We have been saying since the early 2010s that “hackers don’t hack in, they log in,” and as time goes on, it becomes even more true.

“Stolen credentials overtook email phishing as the second most frequently observed initial infection vector in 2024 during intrusions into businesses. At Ontinue, we have witnessed first-hand the rise of sophisticated infostealer malware, which captures passwords as they are entered by users during login. This enables attackers to simply log in if no other secondary authentication methods are enabled, which, sadly, is often the case.

“Awareness is key. Enable passkeys where possible. I suggest we lay the password to rest and embrace the passwordless future.”

“World Password Day serves as an annual reminder of a universal truth: passwords are a pain. Despite being a cornerstone of our digital lives, they consistently fall short. From the widespread practice of password reuse—a virtual invitation to cyber-criminals—to the ease with which they can be compromised through social engineering or simple guessing, the inherent weaknesses of password-based authentication are undeniable.

The post World Password Day Quotes from Industry Experts in 2025 appeared first on Best Identity Access Management (IAM) Software, Tools, Vendors, Solutions, & Services.

Arun Shrestha, the CEO and Co-Founder of BeyondID, shares his thoughts on why it might be time to replace World Password Day. This article originally appeared in Insight Jam, an enterprise IT community that enables human conversation on AI.

Passwords are old news, and World Password Day—once a reminder of cybersecurity best practices—now underscores the importance of phasing out the very authentication method it once championed. With stolen credentials topping the breach origin charts and phishing attacks up 4,151 percent since the launch of ChatGPT, it’s clear that traditional passwords are no longer sufficient. Modern threats call for passwordless authentication—not just for stronger security, but for a frictionless user experience. It’s time to answer the phone. “Everyone, everywhere will be hacked at some point…identity security isn’t just about stopping bad actors—it’s about making sure you’re not making their job easier.”

The Problem with Passwords

Back in 2013, World Password Day was a pretty good idea. Changing your password every 90 days was a solid security strategy, after all. But 12 years later, World Password Day is a relic of a bygone era…and passwords aren’t the answer anymore—they’re the problem.

Relying on passwords in 2025 is like locking your front door and leaving the key under the mat. According to Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report, 77 percent of basic web application attacks involve stolen credentials. Even more alarming, fewer than half of organizations have adopted multi-factor authentication (MFA), leaving accounts vulnerable to credential stuffing and brute-force attacks.

Real-World Risks of Password Reliance

Passwords don’t just fail in theory—they fail in the real world. Reused logins, weak policies, and predictable patterns give attackers easy access to sensitive data. Social engineering and phishing have evolved, too, boosted by AI-generated deepfakes that mimic voices, craft convincing emails, and outsmart human judgment.

A Harvard Kennedy School and Avant Research Group study found that AI-generated phishing emails had a 54 percent click-through rate in 2024, making them as effective, if not more, than those crafted by humans.

MFA Isn’t Always Enough

Despite widespread support—and even mandates from agencies like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)—MFA adoption remains inconsistent at best. But even when implemented, it’s not a silver bullet. Common methods like SMS codes and push notifications are still vulnerable to push fatigue and attacks like SIM swapping.

In early 2024, Cisco Duo’s AI and Security Research team reported that nearly half of security incidents involved MFA bypass attempts. Around the same time, Microsoft’s MFA was found vulnerable to a flaw dubbed AuthQuake, which allowed attackers to bypass MFA protections in minutes through token manipulation, highlighting how quickly poorly configured systems can be exploited.

To stay ahead, organizations need something stronger: phishing-resistant authentication. Think passkeys, FIDO2, and device-bound biometrics. These methods eliminate the weakest link: the user-generated password.

The Case for Going Passwordless

Passwordless authentication isn’t just better than its predecessors—it’s simpler. Users log in with a fingerprint, face scan, or one-time passcode. There are no passwords to remember or credentials to steal—just a seamless, secure experience—and the benefits are measurable.

Gartner estimates that 20-50 percent of IT help desk calls are password resets. That’s a lot of wasted time and money. Passwordless reduces that burden, and with built-in risk detection like device fingerprinting and behavioral biometrics, it also bolsters fraud prevention. Better UX, stronger security, and more resilient systems—this is what passwordless has to offer.

A Better Way to Celebrate Security

Let’s face it: it’s time to retire World Password Day.

Passwords no longer represent best practices, and modern threats demand more than reminders to “update your login.” It’s time to shift focus to strategies that actually work, like phishing-resistant authentication and secure-by-design identity frameworks.

We’ve seen firsthand how this shift occurs in complex, high-risk environments like healthcare. One regional provider recently replaced manual access management with an automated identity integration between their EHR and workforce directory. The result? Stronger compliance, fewer access gaps, and a major boost in operational efficiency. That’s the real-world impact of leaving outdated authentication behind.

Maybe it’s time for Identity-First Access Day. Or Phishing-Resistant Authentication Week. Whatever we call it, the message should be clear: it’s time to celebrate the future of cybersecurity.

The post Why It’s Time to Ditch World Password Day appeared first on Best Identity Access Management (IAM) Software, Tools, Vendors, Solutions, & Services.

Darren James, a Senior Product Manager at Specops Software, an Outpost24 company, explains why attention is required to overcome the risks of weak passwords. This article originally appeared in Insight Jam, an enterprise IT community that enables human conversation on AI.

Despite humanity’s incredible progress in science and technology, a deceptively simple yet essential skill continues to evade mastery—the secure use of strong passwords. Cybersecurity, especially passwords, should be straightforward. The first password was created in 1961 by Fernando Corbato, an MIT computer science professor. It allowed users to have files on a single console connected to a shared mainframe.

That was just over 60 years ago, and you’d have thought it was one of the oldest and simplest teachings in cybersecurity. With tireless efforts by security professionals to raise awareness about the importance of passwords, we should have passwords cracked – pardon the pun. In reality, most people still fall short with poor password hygiene, posing a significant challenge for modern businesses.

Password Struggles Are Real

The emphasis on password security stems from the fact that 88 percent of organizations rely on passwords as their primary authentication method to safeguard their systems yet, when you observe the headlines around the latest major data breach, many trace back to human factors or errors, such as the hack of stolen or compromised login credentials like usernames and passwords.

The research highlighted in the Specops 2025 Breached Password Report, which examined over 1 billion passwords (a subset of a larger 4 billion passwords), paints a true image of how bad the current situation is for businesses and passwords. The report found that individuals remain the weakest link in the security chain, with IT and security teams battling against the prolific use of weak or compromised passwords on a company’s network. For example, the top five stolen passwords are “123456,” “admin,” “12345678,” “password,” and “Password”—all common base terms that security-aware users would avoid using at all costs!

However, among the list of passwords analyzed, over 230 million conformed to the standard complexity requirements found in numerous organizations and used by many consumers, proving these ‘complexity’ requirements need updating. The standard rule is that a password should contain eight characters, a capital letter, a number, and a special character. Eight characters is the default password length requirement in the Active Directory, but even this can be guessed quickly if attackers use brute force techniques. This is because user-created passwords typically follow simple and predictable patterns.

Even when the password length is increased ever so slightly, it is still not secure enough. The analysis revealed over 350 million passwords in the dataset that were longer than 10 characters, with 92 million specifically being 12 characters long. This highlights that even if a password complies with an organization’s standards, it doesn’t guarantee security. Regardless of its length or complexity, any password can be stolen and compromised by malware.

Malware Stealing Credentials Is Now Endemic

A worrying finding from the same research was the number of passwords stolen by malware, over 1 billion. Stolen credentials are in high demand as they provide a simple and direct pathway to valuable data, including personal information, financial records, and corporate secrets. For instance, initial access brokers (IABs) specialize in trading stolen credentials on the dark web and underground forums.

By stealing such sensitive information, threat actors can launch more sophisticated attacks, like widespread phishing campaigns, or even access internal networks to leech and extract more information over time. Such malware is known as infostealers. Like the name suggests, they are designed to infect systems and steal sensitive information like usernames, passwords, payment card details, or general organizational data. The most popular infostealer malware for passwords is Redline, which accounted for nearly half of all the stolen passwords analyzed. Indeed, hackers have stolen 170 million unique sets of credentials in just six months with Redline. Other popular infostealers like Vidar and Raccoon Stealer were responsible for 17 percent and 11.7 percent of stolen passwords, respectively.

Reducing Password Risk

For organizations wanting to reduce password-related risks, there are two key strategies to implement. The first is to ensure that the Active Directory contains long, complex passwords to resist the likelihood of brute-force attacks. Password reuse also poses a significant risk. Even if a password is securely stored in one environment, reusing it on less secure platforms can expose organizations to breaches. Encouraging users to create unique, strong passphrases is essential for robust password security. For those unaware, a passphrase is a password of random whole words, usually three or four.

To further assist IT and security teams and to stop compromised passwords from being used, organizations must deploy dedicated tools to identify these passwords. The tools should be able to continuously scan and provide daily checks against an updated database of breached passwords. This proactive approach enables IT and security teams to locate compromised passwords in the Active Directory, detect potential security risks, and enforce immediate password changes for affected users at the next logon.

Furthermore, rolling out organizational password policies with these tools should be simple for IT and security admins to enforce and easy for users to understand exactly what they need to do. Once integrated, organizations will have enhanced security that meets compliance with industry best practices and regulations while maintaining clear visibility into compromised passwords within their network.

The post Weak Passwords: Why Attention Is Required to Overcome Humanity’s Problem With This Security Basic appeared first on Best Identity Access Management (IAM) Software, Tools, Vendors, Solutions, & Services.

The editors at Solutions Review are exploring the emerging AI application layer with this authoritative list of the best AI agents for cybersecurity use cases that teams should consider integrating into their business security efforts.

The proliferation of generative AI has ushered in a new era of cybersecurity, and AI agents are heavily involved in that transformation. As threat actors continue to find new ways to disrupt businesses, AI has become an essential tool in every company’s lineup of defense systems. Whether autonomously monitoring network traffic, detecting anomalous patterns, or responding to potential threats in real-time, AI agents in cybersecurity can help your company adapt its defense strategies and remain agile as new threats present themselves.

In this up-to-date and authoritative guide, our editors will spotlight some of the top AI agents and agent platforms available today for cybersecurity teams to help you find the right tool for your specific needs. This resource is designed to help you:

• Understand what makes cybersecurity AI agents different from traditional automation tools
• Explore the capabilities and limitations of each available agent or agent platform in the marketplace
• Choose the best solution for your team based on use case, skill level, and scalability options

Note: This list of the best AI agents for cybersecurity was compiled through web research using advanced scraping techniques and generative AI tools. Solutions Review editors use a unique multi-prompt approach to employ targeted prompts to extract critical knowledge and optimize content for relevance and utility. Our editors also utilized Solutions Review’s weekly news distribution services to ensure the information is as close to real-time as possible. The list is organized in alphabetical order.

The Top AI Agents for Cybersecurity Teams

Arctic Wolf Agent

Description: Arctic Wolf’s Agent is a lightweight software designed to autonomously collect actionable intelligence from their IT environments, scan endpoints for vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, and even respond to emerging threats.

Arctic Wolf Agent is managed 24×7 by security operations experts from the Arctic Wolf Concierge Security Team (CST), which provides clients with additional support in their threat detection, assessment, and containment efforts. It’s designed to extend IT bandwidth by monitoring wireless networks, event logs, process tables, installed software, SSL certificates, and more.

Key Features:

• Identify and benchmark risk profiles against globally accepted configuration guidelines and security standards.
• Host-based vulnerability assessment will continuously monitor servers and workstations for vulnerabilities and misconfigurations.
• Only 10MB of memory utilization under normal operating standards.
• Block data exfiltration and propagation of threats by preventing servers and workstations from communicating.

Get Started: Arctic Wolf Agent can be installed transparently via the existing software deployment processes your IT department is working with. It uses universal installers (i.e., MSI and PKG), requires zero maintenance once implemented, carries no performance impact, and can be updated seamlessly through the Arctic Wolf Platform.

Darktrace

Description: Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst combines human expertise with the speed and scale of artificial intelligence. It’s designed to reduce the time spent investigating alerts by streamlining workflows so your security team can focus on urgent or higher-value tasks.

Unlike copilots or prompt-based AI agents built to interpret text, Darktrace’s Cyber AI Assistant can replicate the human investigative process by questioning data, testing hypotheses, and reaching conclusions based on the results, all without human intervention. The Analyst also runs continuously, so it can re-investigate existing alerts with emerging data in real-time to ensure thorough analyses.

Key Features:

• The Analyst can recommend the next-best actions unique to each incident.
• Set up repeatable, integrated investigative workflows that are custom to your organization.
• Autonomous responses stop malicious actions while giving defenders time to analyze and remediate.
• Simplify incident understanding with detailed insights and investigative processes.

Get Started: The Cyber AI Analyst is built to underpin the Darktrace ActiveAI Security Platform, which allows clients to trial the company’s platforms in unison across use cases and technologies.

Fortinet

Description: FortiClient, an agent for the Fortinet Security Fabric solution, provides businesses with protection, compliance, and secure access, all from a single, modular, lightweight client.

The agentic tool runs on an endpoint like a laptop or mobile device. It autonomously communicates with Fortinet Security Fabric to provide users with the information, visibility, and control they need to manage each device. This can minimize the need for manual intervention and promote faster threat remediations across environments.

Key Features:

• Secure endpoints with ML anti-malware and behavior-based anti-exploit.
• FortiClient enables remote workers to securely connect to a network using zero-trust principles.
• Control access to cloud-based applications, including visibility to shadow IT.
• Harden endpoint security with vulnerability scanning, automated patching, software inventory, and app firewall functionalities.

Get Started: FortiClient comes in several models with increasing degrees of protection and capabilities. It’s built to integrate with the key components of Fortinet Security Fabric and is centrally managed by the Endpoint Management Server (EMS). Clients can also enhance the tool’s value with Fortinet’s professional services offerings, which can help streamline upgrades, patches, deployment, and monitoring processes.

Purple AI by SentinelOne

Description: Purple AI is a cybersecurity analyst powered by agentic AI technologies that enable teams to use natural language prompts and context-based suggested queries to identify hidden risks, respond to threats faster, and conduct in-depth investigations.

SentinelOne designed Purple AI to scale autonomous protection across the enterprise and amplify a security team’s capabilities by streamlining and automating SecOps workflows. For example, Purple AI can generate incident summaries, self-documenting notebooks, and recommended queries.

Key Features:

• Purple AI is architected with the highest level of safeguards to protect against misuse and hallucinations.
• Synthesize threat intelligence and contextual insights in a conversational user experience.
• View and manage security data in one place with a unified console for native and third-party security data.
• Generate summaries that communicate the seriousness of an incident, key findings of the hunt, and recommended actions.

Get Started: SentinelOne’s agentic AI functionalities are available in the Complete, Commercial, and Enterprise models of the company’s Singularity solution. Each offering provides scalable features to help companies of all sizes and needs streamline and improve their cybersecurity efforts.

Alex by Twine

Description: Alex is Twine’s first digital employee. The AI agent is designed to join your team and handle the execution and orchestration of identity and access management processes.

Alex is capable of planning, approving, and automatically executing tasks. Potential use cases for Alex include onboarding users to a new application, assigning employees to orphaned accounts, optimizing a company’s existing identity governance and administration (IGA) platforms, and more.

Key Features:

• Autonomously repairs issues, removes roadblocks, and recovers whatever is needed to complete objectives.
• Handle and fix edge cases and exceptions with minimum human intervention.
• Connect and bond multiple HR systems, identity silos, and SaaS platforms within larger organizations.
• Identity applications that require multi-factor authentication (MFA) and migrate them into an MFA framework without disrupting your team’s workflow.

Get Started: Twine’s Digital Employees are designed to integrate easily with a company’s existing systems. The agents learn and adapt to each client’s unique requirements, environments, and applications. Twine’s engineers can even research and build specific integrations to suit special cases when needed.

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For Identity Management Day 2025, the editors at Solutions Review have compiled a list of quotes and commentary from some of the field’s leading experts. These comments originally appeared in Insight Jam, an enterprise IT community that enables human conversation on AI.

As part of Identity Management Day 2025, the Solutions Review editorial team called for the industry’s best and brightest to share their insights, predictions, and commentary on the evolving world of Identity Management technology. The experts featured represent some of the top Cybersecurity solution providers with experience in the marketplace, and each projection has been vetted for relevance and ability to add business value. The list is organized alphabetically by associated company name.

Identity Management Day Quotes from Industry Experts in 2025

Rom Carmel, Co-Founder and CEO of Apono

“The latest advancements in quantum computing chips have brought the technology to the forefront of business leaders’ minds. However, while quantum computing promises significant breakthroughs, it will also introduce an entirely new set of threats. At the heart of this challenge is the risk to digital identities and confidential information. A fully scaled quantum computer will have the capability to break current cryptographic methods widely used to protect our increasingly digital lives. Organizations must prepare for the emerging risks associated with post-quantum cryptography and take the necessary steps to ensure that identities and other sensitive data remain secure.”

Joel Burleson‑Davis, Senior Vice President of Engineering, Cyber at Imprivata

High-Profile Security Lapses Highlight The Human Element Of Identity

“Identity remains one of the weakest links in any security ecosystem. Even the most secure solution can fall victim to human error. It’s tempting to blame the service, but even when a platform is highly secure, the real issue is a lack of stringent identity security processes. Simple measures like identity validation can prevent sensitive information from getting out. Limiting risk goes beyond MFA; continuous identity and permission monitoring are critical. This includes location, behavior-based validation as well as clearly defined identity validation for account management actions, along with consistent security training for everyone from the shop floor to the C-suite. At the end of the day, technology is only as useful as its users. If your endpoint isn’t secure, even the strongest security solutions are reachable.”

Kris Bondi, CEO and Co-founder, Mimoto

“Identity Management Day serves as a crucial reminder to prioritize secure authentication methods to safeguard digital identities. As digital transactions continue to outpace traditional methods, online identity fraud now accounts for over 70 percent of all incidents. To better protect users, both businesses and individuals must adopt stringent identity verification (IDV) strategies. The future lies in leveraging robust multi-factor authentication (MFA) solutions, such as FIDO passkeys, alongside Bring Your Own Identity (BYOI)—a model where users can authenticate through their preferred identity provider (IdP), offering more flexibility and control.”

“BYOI empowers users to leverage the identity systems they trust—whether social logins, corporate credentials, or decentralized identity systems—while maintaining strong security. This user-centric approach meets the growing demand for flexible identity management, allowing individuals to choose their preferred authentication method while ensuring their personal data remains protected. However, it is critical to ensure that the provisioning of these identities is secure, as only then can we fully trust the authentication request.

“As digital identity threats continue to evolve, adopting a comprehensive identity verification (IDV) strategy that incorporates both secure BYOI and robust MFA like FIDO passkeys offers a resilient defense for users and businesses alike. This approach not only ensures a seamless and secure experience but also strengthens the overall integrity of the authentication process, providing trust from start to finish.”

Piyush Pandey, CEO of Pathlock

“A complete identity security solution is no longer a nice to have, it’s a need to have. With the use of AI, malicious actors are generating hyper-realistic deepfakes and sophisticated phishing campaigns, allowing them to steal credentials, assume digital identities, and bypass security measures undetected. Leaving credentials exposed and putting defenders in a constant battle to assess control and contain potential misuse—before it becomes one of the 80 percent of breaches caused by compromised identities.

“Attackers are increasingly abusing identities to launch and spread attacks, with 90 percent of organizations experiencing identity-related breaches in the past year. Because traditional security tools like multi-factor authentication (MFA) are no longer enough to prevent these attacks, it’s critical for security teams to focus on detecting ever-evolving and emerging attacker methods that target both human and machine identities, from network to cloud. With that said, the growing sophistication of hybrid attacks demands the use of AI-powered tools for real-time, behavior-based detection to combat cyber-crime tactics such as phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) and ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) models.

“Fortunately, 89 percent of Security Operations Center (SOC) teams plan to integrate more AI in the coming year to replace outdated threat detection methods. Organizations can strengthen their defenses by using this technology to fortify their identity defenses and know when attackers have compromised an account or abused privilege. As attackers continue to gain access through logging in rather than traditional hacking methods, it’s crucial for SOC teams to detect and identify active threats exploiting identities to properly defend their modern network against today’s modern attacks.”

Alex Quilici, CEO of YouMail

“This Identity Management Day, be skeptical, not scared. By now, your identity is already out there. Your phone number, job title, connections, and even your social security number are all publicly available. The genie is out of the bottle, and pretending otherwise only puts you at greater risk.

“The question isn’t how to hide your identity. It’s how to operate safely in a world where your personal and professional information is already exposed. Assume attackers know more than they should. They’re using publicly available data to impersonate company leaders, target employees, and launch social engineering campaigns that feel alarmingly real. Add in voice cloning and AI-generated deepfakes, and the risk multiplies fast.

“Your personal cell phone is often the softest target. It’s the entry point for malware, impersonation attempts, and data exfiltration. And when that device blurs the line between work and personal life, it becomes even more dangerous. This is where tools make a difference. They not only block suspicious calls or scan for anomalies but also give you visibility into what’s being exposed and how it’s being used. The goal isn’t to lock down every piece of information—that’s no longer realistic—but to reduce the blast radius when something goes wrong.

“Stop chasing perfect privacy and focus instead on proactive protection. That means using technology to monitor for threats, automating offboarding to close access gaps, reassigning ownership, rotating credentials, and putting guardrails in place to detect unusual activity early.”

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Darrell Geusz, Product Lead for Neo at Ping Identity, recently spoke with his colleagues and compiled some of their insights on the trends shaping digital identity, AI, and trust. This article originally appeared in Insight Jam, an enterprise IT community that enables human conversation on AI.

In 2025, the convergence of artificial intelligence (AI), digital identity, and societal expectations will redefine how we trust, transact, and hold organizations accountable. As AI advancements challenge our ability to trust what we see, hear, and experience, a new mindset will emerge that places verification at the core of all digital interactions. Consumers will demand greater transparency and security from businesses, while organizations will adopt innovative technologies like digital wallets to better safeguard identities and foster trust. I spoke with my colleagues at Ping Identity to gather insights on what to expect in 2025 and how businesses can best prepare for the future. Here’s what they had to say:

Andre Durand, CEO and Founder 

“AI is redefining how we communicate, how we work, and most importantly, how we trust. We can no longer implicitly trust what we see, hear, read, or receive, whether it’s an email, text, voice call, or even video call. In 2025, we’ll adopt the ‘trust nothing, verify everything’ mindset, as AI will impersonate everyone from public figures, personal contacts, and even ourselves at a record rate. We used to trust by verifying. In the future, we will only trust what’s been verified. In identity, Verification will become the new Authentication.”

Darryl Jones, Vice President of CIAM

“Identity fraud is not a novel concept. From stolen credit cards to spam calls, consumers have been dealing with identity theft and its ramifications for years—and it’s an increasing risk as advancing technology like artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more prevalent in everyday lives. 2025 will mark the shift of consumers demanding more transparency from businesses around their security practices and the use of AI.

“In fact, 89 percent of consumers already have concerns about AI when it comes to their identity security, and 97 percent have concerns about their personal data being online. Consumers will begin holding companies accountable, insisting that the businesses they interact with do better when it comes to protecting their personal data amid the AI boom. Organizations deemed untrustworthy will become extinct by default and need to adjust their approach to digital identity in order to keep up with rising concerns, or else risk losing loyalty.”

Patrick Harding, Chief Product Architect

“If 2024 was the year when cyber-criminals became more sophisticated, and deepfakes came onto the scene at a record rate, then 2025 will be centered on how organizations choose to secure their business, adopting new technology to combat these threats while putting control back in the hands of customers.

“As such, 2025 will be the year we’ll see increasing adoption of digital wallets that safely secure digital identities and allow users to transact, travel, and verify identities at a moment’s notice. According to a new study, 74 percent of consumers like the idea of digital wallets or ID cards that are kept on personal mobile devices, but barriers to adoption are top of mind. Businesses will start adopting a seamless, gradual, and approachable rollout to digital IDs, helping ease consumer concerns while progressing to more widespread adoption. Those who cannot offer a secure, customer-centric experience will be at risk of falling behind early adopters who embrace this new wave of digital interaction.

“The challenges and opportunities brought by AI, digital identity, and evolving societal expectations will demand a fundamental shift in how we approach trust and accountability. Organizations that prioritize verification over assumption, embrace secure and user-centric technologies, and align their practices with consumer demands for transparency will lead the way in this new era. By adapting to these transformative forces, businesses can not only navigate the complexities of the year ahead but also build a foundation of trust that ensures long-term success and competitiveness.”

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Darren James, a Senior Product Manager at Specops Software, an Outpost24 company, explains the key updates coming in the latest version of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) guidelines and outlines how companies can create PCI DSS-compliant policies. This article originally appeared in Insight Jam, an enterprise IT community that enables human conversation on AI.

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) established a comprehensive set of guidelines aimed at safeguarding cardholder data and ensuring businesses handling payment card information operate in a secure environment. Within its guidelines, PCI DSS places particular importance on implementing robust password policies to prevent unauthorized access and reduce the risk of data breaches.  

Now, with the latest version of these guidelines, PCI DSS v4.0.1, there are notable updates organizations must navigate to remain compliant, which include both immediate and future compliance requirements to be made. Certain provisions took effect in April 2024 but a set of more advanced best practice measures, which are more challenging to address due to the need for certain technologies, will be mandatory for organizations to comply with come March 31, 2025. It establishes requirements for various critical aspects of password management, such as password complexity, change frequency, history tracking, lockout mechanisms, secure storage, and user education. These updates are designed to strengthen cybersecurity in response to evolving threats but present significant implementation challenges for many organizations. 

Key Update 1:

PCI DSS v4.0.1 highlights the importance of adopting stronger, more complex passwords to enhance security. The minimum password length for general user accounts is set at 12 characters. However, for service accounts used by applications, services, and systems, a password of at least 15 characters is recommended. These passwords should meet complexity requirements by including alphanumeric characters and be checked against breached or commonly compromised password lists.  

Key update 2:

The update relaxes the requirement for regular password expiration, shifting focus to changing passwords only in cases of known or suspected compromise. This approach aims to reduce users’ tendency to create weak, predictable passwords that often result from overly frequent change requirements, ultimately enhancing overall security. 

Key update 3:

PCI DSS v4.0.1 introduces enhanced requirements for password storage to bolster security. Passwords must be stored using robust encryption methods and protected with strong hashing algorithms, ensuring that stored credentials remain secure against unauthorized access or compromise.  

Key update 4:

Under the new requirements, passwords must be transmitted securely using strong encryption and secure protocols like HTTPS or SSH. This ensures that sensitive password information remains confidential during transmission over networks, protecting it from unauthorized access and inception.  

Key update 5:

PCI DSS v4.0.1 mandates the use of secure password management systems equipped with features like multi-factor authentication (MFA) and detailed audit logs. MFA is now a mandatory requirement for all administrative access to these systems, while audit logs ensure accountability and traceability of all password management activities.  

Key update 6:

The new requirements highlight the importance of user education on password security, emphasizing the need for strong passwords and secure practices. To achieve this, the organization will implement comprehensive training programs and conduct regular awareness campaigns to educate and remind employees of password security best practices. An added security user education measure would be to provide feedback on password change, password hygiene, and best practices.  

Key update 7:

PCI DSS v4.0.1 promotes the use of automated password management tools, such as password managers, to help users generate and store complex passwords securely. Additionally, automated systems will be implemented to enforce strong password policies and proactively detect weak or compromised passwords, enhancing overall password security.  

Creating a PCI-DSS-compliant policy for your organization 

To achieve PCI-DSS compliance, organizations must establish a robust password policy that prioritizes security. This policy should mandate strong, complex passwords that are at least 12 characters long, ideally 15 for passwords changed due to compromise. A diverse character set, including uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters, is essential to enhance password strength.

To mitigate the risk of password reuse, the policy should enforce regular password changes, typically every 90 days, unless a risk-based assessment justifies a longer interval. Alternatively, organizations can introduce length-based password aging policies, whereby users are rewarded for selecting a long password by extending the time until they need to change it. For example, if a user has a 12-character password, then they will have to change it every 90 days, while a 20-character password could be set to only expire if the password is breached.  

Implementing password history checks, storing a minimum of the last four passwords, further strengthens security by preventing password recycling. To deter unauthorized access attempts, account lockout mechanisms should be configured to lock accounts after a specified number of failed login attempts, typically five, for a minimum of 30 minutes.  

Safeguarding sensitive password information is paramount. Strong encryption methods must be employed to store passwords securely, preventing unauthorized access and data breaches. For instance, anything less than 15 characters could still potentially be stored as a weak LM Hash. The simplest way to avoid storing an LM Hash for a password is to enforce the use of passwords that are at least 15 characters long. When passwords meet or exceed this length, Windows generates an LM Hash value that is unusable for authenticating an end-user.  

To foster a culture of password security, organizations should prioritize user education and helpful feedback when they set or change their passwords. Regular training sessions should emphasize the importance of strong password practices, the risks associated with weak or reused passwords, and the benefits of using password managers. Continuous monitoring and review of the password policy are essential to ensure its effectiveness and alignment with evolving security standards. Regular audits and assessments can identify potential vulnerabilities and inform necessary adjustments to the policy.

Additionally, organizations should carry out continuous scanning for all passwords to check whether a user’s password becomes breached over time. A password might be fine for one week, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be breached the following week, month, or year. Continuous scanning gives the business real-time updates to remediate the breached password if and when this occurs. Finally, clear documentation of the password policy is crucial. The policy should be readily accessible to all relevant employees, and its enforcement should be consistently applied across the organization. By adhering to these guidelines, organizations can significantly enhance their password security posture and strengthen their overall PCI-DSS compliance.  

With time quickly running out, the time for organizations to act is now. Those who prioritize compliance can significantly reduce the risk of cardholder data breaches, minimize operational disruptions, and enhance their overall cybersecurity posture. Whether through internal changes or external expertise, planning and understanding the new requirements are crucial for safeguarding sensitive information and mitigating cyber threats.

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The primary cybersecurity tool your company can use to prevent data breaches is identity and access management (IAM). Identity management (specifically, identity authentication) forms the digital perimeter composed of now-legacy antivirus solutions. This digital perimeter is the primary mechanism by which threat actors are kept out. Even if they penetrate the perimeter, identity management can constrain threat actor permissions, limiting the damage they inflict on your network.  

Your enterprise needs an identity and access management solution. It’s the only tool for thoroughly monitoring who accesses what, when, where, how, and why. How else can you be sure that your employees are who they say they are? With that in mind, the editors at Solutions Review have compiled this list of the best identity and access management software companies in the marketplace to help you find the best tool for your organization’s needs in 2025 (and beyond).

Note: Companies are listed in alphabetical order.

The Best Identity and Access Management Providers

Avatier

Description: Avatier offers a suite of independently-licensed identity and access management products focused on providing usability and quick time-to-value with its flagship Identity Anywhere platform. Avatier delivers a unique approach that extends its IAM automation and self-service capabilities beyond the traditional enterprise use cases. Its solutions help enterprises automate operations and conduct access certifications from any endpoint device regardless of its location. Avatier also delegates security, administration, password management, and Single Sign-On.  

Auth0

Description: Auth0 provides a platform to authenticate, authorize, and secure access for applications, devices, and users. Auth0 values simplicity, extensibility and enables security and application teams to make identity work for everyone in their organizations. Auth0’s Authentication platform features frictionless logins, Single Sign-On, while its Access Management Platform offers API Authorization and RBAC. Its authentication capabilities include diverse options such as Step-Up and adaptive multi-factor to provide unique use cases.  

Broadcom

Description: Broadcom folded CA Technologies’ end-to-end Identity Management portfolio with its Identity Suite, Secure Cloud IDaaS solution, Single Sign-On, Advanced Authentication, and Privileged Access Management Capabilities. Layer7 provides an integrated solution for on-premises and cloud application provisioning and governance that manages user identities throughout their entire lifecycle. Broadcom also increases audit and compliance efficiency through streamlined governance campaigns. Additionally, it offers consumer-grade scalability and real-time policy enforcement. 

Curity

Description: Curity is a significant supplier of API-driven identity management, providing unified security for digital services. The Curity Identity Server operates as an OAuth and OpenID Connect Server. Enterprises can use it for logging in and securing users’ access to the web and mobile apps over APIs and microservices as the business scales. Also, the Curity Identity Server is built upon open standards designed for development and operations. The provider can address organizations’ enterprise-grade API security needs in financial services, telecom, retail, energy, and government services. 

Fischer Identity

Description: Fischer International’s Identity as a Service (IaaS) is an enterprise-grade full-suite identity solution for private cloud or on-premise servers. Fischer Identity offers user provisioning for end-user full-lifecycle management, access governance, self-service password management, SSO/Federation, and five-factor authentication to securely manage identities in complex corporate environments. Fischer also offers complete audit logging, over 100 out-of-the-box reports, a comprehensive connector library in every license purchase, and easy-to-use dashboards. 

FusionAuth

Description: FusionAuth is a single-tenant CIAM solution for enterprise web and mobile applications. Built for developers, FusionAuth’s REST API installs with one command to provide secure on-premises or private cloud identity with login, registration, multi-factor authentication, Single Sign-On, email templates, localization, role-based access control, and brute-force detection. FusionAuth also offers flexible password controls to simplify user provisioning and migration, delivering user reports, moderation, reward/discipline, user search & segmentation features. 

HID Global

Description: HID Global offers various solutions ranging from biometric sensors and read modules; these include OEM embedded reader modules and finished desktop readers that validate identity using fingerprints or hard tokens. HID Global’s solutions can integrate into existing business systems, both analog and digital. Its solutions feature advanced multi-factor authentication, credential management, and analytics. The vendor also provides access control systems with support for many credential technologies. It tailors its specific solutions to match with different verticals and use cases. 

IBM

Description: IBM offers the Cloud Identity Service product, a cloud-based identity and access management solution which offers multi-factor authentication, SSO, and user lifecycle management. IBM delivers its Cloud Identity Service as a multi-tenant model, though some components can be delivered in a dedicated model. The IBM Security Identity Governance (ISIG) platform provides end-to-end user lifecycle management, identity analytics, and enhanced password synchronization. IBM’s products offer deep functionality and robust connectivity with a range of complementary products. 

Identity Automation

Description: Identity Automation’s signature RapidIdentity product supports identity governance and administration capabilities, automated provisioning, access, and account management in both on-premise and as-a–service deployments. The solution also boasts secure Single Sign-On access to nearly any enterprise system, multi-factor authentication across all applications and databases, and time-based access expiration. The RapidIdentity solution is also offered in several different editions, each specialized to suit specific business verticals’ authentication and compliance demands. 

ManageEngine

Description: ManageEngine, the IT management division of Zoho Corporation, offers its. AD360 platform. The AD360 is an integrated identity and access management (IAM) solution designed to assist enterprises in managing and securing user identities while facilitating identity governance and ensuring compliance. It helps simplify IAM by providing a complete suite of tools with considerable advantages over native tools. Using AD360, administrators can monitor and manage their enterprise’s on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments from a single console.  

Microsoft

Description: Microsoft offers its Azure Active Directory (AAD) Premium service. AAD offers comparable capabilities to other major IDaaS offerings and includes access to Microsoft Identity Manager products and other SaaS applications for use with its on-premise systems. Microsoft also provides active directory services, federation services, multi-tenant support, and cloud-based directory services, all bundled with EMM and rights management and supported by 28 data centers worldwide. Additionally, it provides conditional access and multi-factor authentication. 

My1Login

Description: My1Login’s Password Manager solutions offer Single Sign-On without revealing credentials, audited access to privileged accounts, and permission-based sharing. Additionally, My1Login integrates with web apps, virtualized apps, and even Windows desktop apps without requiring APIs. Thus, the vendor can provide SSO seamlessly linked to the user’s directory login. My1Login cannot access customer data since this is encrypted client-side, using safely secured keys inside the customer’s environment.  

Okta

Description: Okta’s Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) offering boasts one of the fastest-growing customer bases in the market and the funding to match. The Okta Identity Management Service provides centralized directory services, Single Sign-On, strong authentication, provisioning, workflow, and reporting. All of this is delivered as a multi-tenant IDaaS with some components operating on-premise. In addition to their industry-standard IDaaS capabilities, Okta also provides MDM and phone-as-a-token authentication capabilities for multi-factor authentication policy implementation. 

Omada

Description: The Omada Identity and Omada Identity Cloud provide an enterprise platform for identity management and identity governance that is available as a comprehensive system. Omada features a flexible data model, excellent dashboards, and powerful reporting capabilities, including closed-loop reporting. User-facing elements of all identity lifecycle scenarios support a flexible data model for user entitlements. Omada also offers specific provisioning services and industry-tailored solutions for several verticals, including Banking and Finance, Life-Sciences, Manufacturing, Public, Utilities, and Retail.  

One Identity

Description: One Identity offers solutions with a modular and integrated approach to user account management that provides rapid time-to-value. One Identity offers comprehensive functionality that allows customers to build on their existing security investments. One Identity Manager offers different solution “editions” offered to various industry verticals, including but not limited to communications, banking, insurance, and media services. Its primary strengths include governance, policy management, workflow capabilities, and out-of-the-box capabilities. 

OneLogin

Description: OneLogin, which was acquired by One Identity in October 2021, provides on-demand IDaaS solutions consisting of Single Sign-On, multi-factor authentication, directory integration, user provisioning capabilities. The solution is provided via a multi-tenant architecture and provides solid capabilities and support for access management policy administration, user directory integration, and end-user self-service. As major proponents of the OpenID Native Applications Working Group (NAPPS), OneLogin has taken a standards-based approach to application integration and established itself as a thought leader in the field of authentication. 

OpenText

Description: OpenText is a global provider of information management solutions that focuses on helping its clients securely capture, govern, and exchange information worldwide. Included in its Cybersecurity Cloud portfolio are identity and access management capabilities. With these tools, OpenText can help companies simplify user access to applications via Single Sign-On (SSO), automate access certifications, improve regulatory compliance, reduce data breaches, enable real-time threat responses, secure unstructured data, provide options for additional authentication procedures, and automate identity processes, including password management, access requests, and user provisioning.

Optimal IdM

Description: Initially founded in 2005, Optimal IdM has since evolved into a global provider of affordable identity and access management solutions. The privately held company offers both on-premise solutions, such as its Virtual Identity Server and Federation and Identity Services, and cloud-hosted solutions, such as OptimalCloud. OptimalCloud is a cloud-based federation and SSO solution. Optimal IdM also provides a single-tenant IDaaS offering via Optimal Federation and Identity Services (OFIS), an on-premise software offering. 

Oracle

Description: The Oracle Identity Governance (OIG) Suite is an integrated identity suite that centralizes security for enterprises’ applications and web services and provides a single point of contact for support under a single license contract. OIG suite is marketed for and well-suited to large enterprise customers with global footprints. Accordingly, OIG is a highly complex, scalable, and flexible product, offering a product that can more than adequately protect small or mid-sized businesses as well. 

Ping Identity

Description: Ping Identity’s Identity Defined Security works to secure workforces and customers both on-premises and remote, allowing the right people to access the right things securely and seamlessly. Ping Identity works to accelerate its move to the cloud while delivering a rich customer experience. Additionally, Ping Identity can quickly onboard partners as part of their digital transformation. It allows employees, customers, and partners the freedom to access the cloud and on-premises applications they need with an enterprise IDaaS solution that includes multi-factor authentication, Single Sign-On, and access security. 

Radiant Logic

Description: Radiant Logic delivers standards-based access to all identities within an organization. Its solution, the RadiantOne FID federated identity and directory service, enables customizable identity views built from disparate data silos—along with scalable sync and storage—to drive critical authentication, authorization, and provisioning decisions for web access management, federation, cloud, and cloud directory deployments. The RadiantOne solution aims to reduce administrative efforts, simplify data integration and storage, and build a flexible identity infrastructure to meet changing business demands. 

RSA

Description: RSA offers its clients a suite of integrated risk management, identity access & management, threat detection, and omnichannel fraud prevention solutions. These solutions can help organizations manage risk in the evolving digital era by integrating technologies, uniting stakeholders, turning risks into rewards. Its IAM platform, SecurID, equips users with the access management and identity governance capabilities they need without compromising on security, ease of use, or overall convenience.

SailPoint

Description: SailPoint offers both traditional Identity Management with its IdentityIQ solution and IdentityNow, a multi-tenant Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) solution. IdentityIQ is provided as a stand-alone, on-premises product with several optional add-ons. SailPoint’s Identity IQ is well-regarded for its strong identity governance and provisioning capabilities. IdentityIQ is also a hosted managed service for enterprises strapped for cybersecurity and identity talent. IdentityNow’s true strength lies in its access governance capabilities, which build SailPoint’s background as an IGA innovator. 

Salesforce

Description: Salesforce entered the Identity and Access Management market in 2013 with the release of Salesforce Identity. This IDaaS solution is both offered as an independent service and as part of Salesforce’s cloud Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solution offering. Salesforce Identity features baseline IDaaS capabilities for establishing and enforcing enterprise-level access policy and provisioning and an excellent and integrated graphical workflow for policy management, enterprise social identity, and centralized access management capabilities. 

Saviynt

Description: Saviynt approaches identity governance and administration holistically, moving beyond core Identity Governance to cloud security, application GRC, and access governance—all within an entirely cloud-based solution. Saviynt’s platform can facilitate and automate user access reviews, onboarding, offboarding, and lifecycle management. It also enables import access, usage data from applications in real-time or as a batch recognizes violations and remediation suggestions. Saviynt can also develop rules and roles based on user data, attributes, behaviors and offer suggestions. 

SecureAuth

Description: SecureAuth offers specific industry solutions for healthcare, energy, and retail. SecureAuth’s solutions allow customers to manage privileged access to applications in the cloud or on-premise through provisioning user access changes, certifying user access, remediating access violations, and generating audit and compliance reports. Its specific use cases include 25 multi-factor authentication methods to supplant password-oriented and two-factor authentication and options to protect Microsoft Office 365 in particular.  

Simeio

Description: Atlanta-based Simeio Solutions offers a variety of IAM solutions as both dedicated cloud hosting and on-premise managed services. Simeio offers IDaaS to clients who want consumer IAM and/or CIAM capabilities as a Service via on-premise, hosted on cloud, or hybrid with a private cloud option available. Its identity security platform, Identity Orchestrator, allows clients to consume Identity-as-a-Service or leverage previous investments and manage their legacy IAM environments with next-generation protection. 

Tools4ever

Description: Tools4Ever develops and provides standardized and affordable IGA solutions. Tools4ever’s software suite includes access management, password management, authorization management, and AD and NTFS auditing tools and capabilities. In addition to identity governance and administration, Tools4Ever also enables self-service resets, centralized access reporting, detailed audit logs, and Single Sign-On. Tools4Ever also offers an inhouse team of IT consultants to assist with enterprises’ identity governance and administration deployment and implementations. 

Ubisecure

Description: Ubisecure is a European technology provider specializing in high scale customer IAM (CIAM) use-cases. Its Identity Platform is designed to enhance an enterprise’s customer-facing applications by providing a high-quality experience to increase customer capture, conversion, and engagement. It allows enterprises to obtain and secure customer data for strategic business purposes while simultaneously meeting essential regulatory requirements like GDPR. Its solution is available via on-premise software, private cloud, or as a managed service.

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