Identity Attack Surface Management (IASM) is an emerging cybersecurity discipline focused on managing and reducing the risks associated with digital identities across an organization’s entire environment. As identity becomes the new perimeter in cloud-native and hybrid IT infrastructures, attackers increasingly exploit weak, exposed, or over-permissioned accounts to gain unauthorized access. IASM aims to provide complete visibility and control over all identity-related assets.

‍

IASM covers a broad range of identities, including:

• Human identities such as employees, contractors, and third-party partners.
• Non-human identities like service accounts, APIs, bots, and machine identities.

A core function of IASM is discovery—identifying all identity relationships, entitlements, and access paths across cloud platforms, SaaS applications, and on-prem environments. Once visibility is established, IASM tools analyze risks such as excessive permissions, inactive accounts, privileged access, and toxic combinations (e.g., conflicting roles that violate separation-of-duties principles).

‍

Key benefits of IASM include:

• Reduction of the identity attack surface by enforcing least privilege.
• Proactive threat mitigation, identifying and resolving risky configurations before they’re exploited.
• Support for Zero Trust by continuously validating users, roles, and access paths.
• Compliance support, aligning identity governance with standards like SOX, GDPR, and NIST 800-53.

IASM solutions often integrate with Identity and Access Management (IAM) systems, Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM), and Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tools to provide a holistic view of identity risks.

‍

In today’s decentralized and dynamic environments, where cloud services and remote work are the norm, IASM plays a crucial role in strengthening cybersecurity defenses. By treating identities as critical attack surfaces, organizations can significantly reduce breach risk and improve security posture.