Lifecycle management

Identity lifecycle management (ILM) is the practice of controlling the full lifecycle of digital identities—whether human (employee and non-employee), machine, or AI agent — across an organization’s ecosystem. It encompasses everything from onboarding users and provisioning access to adjusting entitlements during role changes and fully deactivating accounts upon departure. The goal is to ensure that every identity only has access to the right systems, data, and applications for the appropriate duration.

As digital ecosystems grow more complex, with the inclusion of bots, service accounts, APIs, and autonomous agents performing critical business functions, managing these non-human identities becomes just as essential as managing employee accounts. ILM helps ensure that machine identities, which often operate 24/7 and access sensitive data, are governed, tracked, and secured with the same rigor as human users.

Through automation and intelligence, ILM enforces policies consistently across all identity types. It supports regulatory compliance, reduces the likelihood of overprovisioned or orphaned access, and enhances operational efficiency. In today’s dynamic, hybrid environments, ILM is fundamental for ensuring least-privileged access and securing the organization against both human error and automated threats.

ILM strengthens security by tightly governing access across all identities — employees, contractors, machine identities, and AI agents — based on real-time role, context, and behavior. In traditional IT environments, access is often granted once and rarely reviewed, leaving organizations exposed to access creep, privilege misuse, and compliance risks. ILM eliminates these vulnerabilities by automating the provisioning, adjustment, and deactivation of access across all identity types.

Machine identities and AI agents, which increasingly interact with sensitive systems and data, are particularly vulnerable if left unmanaged. ILM assigns unique identities to these non-human actors, applies policy-based controls, and regularly reviews their entitlements to ensure they align with current tasks and operational scope. If a bot or service account no longer performs its intended function, access is revoked or adjusted automatically.

For human identities, ILM adapts to organizational changes like promotions, role shifts, or terminations, ensuring access reflects the user’s current responsibilities. Combined with user activity analytics and AI-driven recommendations, ILM reduces manual errors, detects anomalies early, and enforces zero-trust principles organization-wide. By creating a unified, intelligent approach to identity governance, ILM serves as a powerful safeguard in the fight against internal threats, misconfigurations, and cyberattacks.

Yes. Modern ILM platforms are built to govern access for a diverse and growing identity landscape — including not just full-time employees, but also contractors, temporary workers, third-party vendors, machine identities (like APIs and bots), and AI agents. Each of these identity types presents unique challenges in terms of access duration, scope, and governance, and ILM provides the structure to manage them effectively.

For non-human identities like service accounts or AI-powered agents, ILM assigns identity profiles, enforces lifecycle policies, and tracks entitlements as part of a centralized governance framework. For instance, an AI agent that performs autonomous decision-making or a bot that executes financial transactions must be provisioned with the minimum necessary access and monitored continuously for risk. When their operational role changes or expires, their access is automatically adjusted or removed.

Contractors and partners often require time-limited or project-based access. ILM supports these use cases with policies that grant just-in-time access, automate expiration dates, and trigger reviews when access needs to change. This ensures that no identity—human or machine—is overlooked or over-provisioned. In doing so, ILM enables organizations to scale securely, maintain visibility, and reduce the attack surface across all user types and identity categories.