Identity is the control plane of modern cybersecurity. Identity is no longer confined to workforce access or Identity and Access Management (IAM) tools. It is moving into the fabric of how digital systems operate, interact, and are governed.
In a distributed, cloud-based and AI-driven world, identity is increasingly the mechanism through which access, trust, policy, and risk are defined and enforced.
The signals are coming from several directions at once. The identity community is debating agentic AI and machine-driven economies, and Europe is pushing ahead with European Digital Identity (EUDI) wallets and federated trust models. Research by KuppingerCole Analysts on Secure Remote Access (SRA) in Operational Technology (OT) and Industrial Control Systems (ICS), and on the shift from controls to business resilience, shows the same pattern in operational environments. Identity is no longer just checking who gets in. It is beginning to govern what happens next.
Agentic AI and machine-driven economies
One reason this shift matters is the rise of software agents that can request data, trigger workflows, call Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and act with growing autonomy. Security cannot stop at verifying a human user at login. Every non-human actor needs a verifiable identity, bounded authority, and a clear policy context.
That changes the role of identity. It is no longer just about proving who someone is. It is about deciding what an agent may do, on whose behalf, for how long, and under which conditions. Without that identity layer, organizations risk creating automation without accountability. With it, they gain a way to apply trust, policy, and oversight to actions that may happen at machine speed.
EUDI wallets and federated trust models
The same shift is visible beyond the enterprise. EUDI wallets and federated trust models show identity becoming a portable trust layer between organizations, services, and individuals. Instead of relying on copied data, static credentials, or loose trust assumptions, parties can exchange verifiable identity claims and apply policy at the point of use.
This has real operational value. Onboarding becomes more reliable. Access decisions become more precise. Compliance becomes easier to support because claims can be verified rather than assumed. Identity here is not a background function. It is the mechanism that carries trust across boundaries and helps to govern digital interactions without forcing everything into a single central system.
That is why identity is beginning to look less like a toolset and more like infrastructure.
Identity becomes the enforcement layer for Zero Trust in industrial environments
Nowhere is this more tangible than in SRA for OT and ICS. In industrial settings, network boundaries are increasingly porous, assets are heterogeneous, and connectivity can be intermittent or constrained. In those conditions, network location is not a dependable basis for trust. Identity is.
In practice, that means every access request, whether from an operator, third-party vendor, application, or machine identity, can be anchored in verified identity rather than assumed trust. Access decisions can then be based on role, device posture, location, time, and risk signals. Privileged access can be granted Just-in-Time (JIT) for a specific task, instead of being left standing for months. Sessions can be linked to identity for monitoring, recording, and intervention when behaviour becomes unusual.
This matters for resilience as much as security. In disconnected, degraded, intermittent, and limited bandwidth conditions, identity services can be designed to continue enforcing policy locally when links to central systems are disrupted. That helps to keep operations running while preserving control, traceability, and accountability. It also strengthens audit, compliance, and forensics because actions can be tied back to identities across Information Technology (IT), OT, and cloud services.
For industrial cybersecurity, this is a significant change. Identity is no longer supporting the control layer. It is becoming the control layer.
Identity is no longer just an access mechanism
What does this mean for security leaders, architects, and operations teams? It means identity can no longer be treated as a narrow IAM topic. It has to be designed as a core part of security architecture, resilience planning, and operational control.
Organizations that still think of identity mainly in terms of workforce login and directory services, risk missing the bigger shift. The real question now is whether identity can govern human access, machine interactions, autonomous agents, third party connections, and federated trust with the same clarity and consistency.
That is the challenge, but it is also the opportunity. If identity is becoming the control plane of modern cybersecurity, now is the time to review whether your identity strategy can support contextual access, JIT privilege, resilient operations, and trust across boundaries.
To explore what this means in practice, and how to build identity-led control into security architecture, KuppingerCole Analysts research and advisory teams can help organizations assess where identity fits in their security strategy, where gaps remain, and how to move from fragmented controls to identity-centric governance that supports both resilience and trust.
