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The Power of AI + ML + Identity

It’s only been a couple of months since we unveiled SailPoint Predictive Identity and the conversations I’ve had with customers and prospects since then have only further solidified what we suspected: the future is here. Organizations are showing signs of being more than ready to tackle their identity programs from a new, more predictive, automated and adaptive lens. With the addition of AI and ML technologies, identity teams can move much more quickly when making important identity decisions. What a welcomed relief to stay out of the weeds of approving low-risk activities when there are many more high-priority identity decisions to be made that require human manpower over AI/ML ‘manpower.’

And this is just one example among many ways that SailPoint Predictive Identity can help. To that end, I thought I’d share some additional context today on our vision for SailPoint Predictive Identity along with a few use cases to give you a better feel for the power of AI + ML + identity.

SailPoint Predictive Identity

SailPoint Predictive Identity is both our vision for the future of identity and our approach to how we engineer our open identity platforms. Using IdentityAI as the big identity data engine that drives SailPoint Predictive Identity allows us to deliver AI and ML-enabled use cases across our core open identity platforms –IdentityNow and IdentityIQ.

It’s all about the Data

At the end of the day, SailPoint Predictive Identity starts with data. It is the foundation for everything we do with our AI and ML engines. We built a data pipeline that consolidates data from multiple sources and makes it available for analysis and visualization. This allows us to move data efficiently into the IdentityAI engine from IdentityIQ and IdentityNow, which form the basis of the SailPoint Predictive Identity analysis. This data pipeline can also be used to bring in data from other sources to augment or extend the data collected from IdentityIQ and IdentityNow. Once the data is loaded in the big data repository, we can begin processing the data for different use cases.

The power of AI + ML + Identity

As you can likely attest to based on your own identity environment, there tends to be a LOT of identity data to sift through. With most identity teams today running very lean, and some organizations not even having a full identity team in-house, sifting through all of this data can be daunting if not downright impossible. With SailPoint Predictive Identity, we just made that task a lot more accessible and feasible.

With SailPoint Predictive Identity, we first process the data to begin establishing a historical view of access across the enterprise. This includes a view of how access is modeled (e.g., what entitlements are included in which roles) and who has access to what. This information is updated with every change in the system through near real-time updates. We then use this data to build the base peer group models that we use for outlier analysis and other identity governance processes. For example, as new data comes into the IdentityAI engine, we can assess whether it creates an outlier event –e.g., someone has gained access that appears anomalous in relation to what a user’s peer group has. We can generate reports that highlight these outliers so action can be taken immediately –e.g., revoking extra access.

As another use case example, SailPoint Predictive Identity can be used to generate recommendations in access certifications and approvals. This provides valuable context to business users as they navigate the complex world of digital access. With SailPoint Predictive Identity, we can give them new insights into standard access that should be approved or outlier access that needs to be scrutinized and assessed for the level of risk that might be introduced as a result. And finally, our SailPoint Predictive Identity Vision also includes using AL/ML to model access dynamically. The SailPoint engineering team is hard at work building a new AI-enabled role mining engine that will debut later this year.

As you can see from these examples alone, we’re at the tip of the iceberg with SailPoint Predictive Identity. We believe that it’s time for identity to become less complex and more accessible, less static and more dynamic and adaptive, and easier to deploy, administer and maintain. That is what the future of identity sounds like and we’re proud to be at the forefront of that evolution with SailPoint Predictive Identity.

This is the first in a series of blog posts on SailPoint Predictive Identity. Stay tuned for the next post in the series where Paul will explore the recommendations engine in greater depth.


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