This is an update of our 2025 report on Access Management. If you would like to see what this report entails, you can view it by clicking this link.
Access Management solutions increasingly converge with adjacent Identity and Access Management (IAM) and cybersecurity domains, including:
- API Security
- Identity Governance and Administration (IGA)
- Privileged Access Management (PAM)
- Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR)
- Fraud Reduction and Intelligence Platforms (FRIP)
- Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
- Unified Endpoint Management (UEM)
- Zero Trust architectures
In addition, the market is evolving toward support for increasingly granular, contextual, and policy-driven authorization models. Organizations are moving beyond traditional role-based approaches toward Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC), Relationship-Based Access Control (ReBAC), policy-as-code frameworks, and externalized authorization architectures capable of supporting dynamic enterprise environments and modern application architectures.
Passwordless and phishing-resistant authentication mechanisms are also becoming strategic priorities. Support for standards such as FIDO2 and WebAuthn, passkeys, device-bound credentials, and strong identity verification capabilities are increasingly viewed as foundational capabilities rather than optional enhancements.
Another major shift in the market is the growing importance of NHIs and machine access. Modern Access Management solutions increasingly need to support APIs, service accounts, workloads, bots, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents, and machine-to-machine communication scenarios while maintaining centralized visibility, governance, and policy enforcement.
The market is also witnessing increasing adoption of:
- Continuous Access Evaluation (CAE)
- Continuous and adaptive authentication
- Shared security signal frameworks
- Session attack detection and protection
- Real-time risk analysis
- AI-assisted policy recommendations and automation
- Identity wallets and verifiable credentials
As organizations modernize authentication and authorization frameworks, Access Management is becoming a foundational component of identity security strategies. Modern solutions must balance security, usability, operational efficiency, developer enablement, scalability, compliance, and interoperability across increasingly distributed and heterogeneous digital ecosystems.
This Leadership Compass evaluates Access Management solutions deployed on-premises, in the cloud, or in hybrid environments. Solutions delivered as managed services are also considered, provided the vendor owns and develops the underlying technology and intellectual property.
