Seeing is securing: Why visibility must come before control

Here’s a truth that should be plastered on every security dashboard: you can’t control what you can’t see. In a world flooded with human and machine identities crisscrossing cloud, SaaS, and on-prem ecosystems, traditional tools often struggle to provide a complete view of this landscape. This is why Gartner’s Identity Visibility and Intelligence Platform (IVIP) is making waves as an emerging category designed to address these specific challenges in identity security.

What is Identity Visibility and Intelligence Platform (IVIP)?

IVIP provides a unified view of identities—their activities, access paths, and entitlements—by integrating data across IAM, IGA, and PAM systems. With intelligence and machine learning, it detects risky access, anomalies, and blind spots missed by siloed tools, offering context-rich visibility into who has access to what, where, and why. Gartner predicts 70% of CISOs will adopt IVIP by 2028 to reduce IAM attack surfaces.

Why is this a game-changer? IVIPs don’t just identify issues—they connect the dots, enable automation, and simplify audits. The result? Fewer dormant accounts, smoother joiner/mover/leaver processes, sharper privileged access insights, and happier auditors.

Here are the top three takeaways every IAM and security leader should know:

1. Visibility before control: The critical first step

Don’t bother locking the front door if you don’t know how many back doors you’ve left wide open. “Visibility before control” isn’t just a catchy mantra—it’s a necessity for survival in today’s IT sprawl. If you’re uncertain about who’s got access to what applications, what entitlements are floating around, or where permissions persist, you’re pretty much handing out free passes to attackers. Step one is getting full, real-time visibility—across all identities, apps, and access points—so you know exactly where your risks lie.

2. Unified observability & application intelligence: No more blind spots

Ever tried finding the leak in a ship with only a flashlight and a soggy spreadsheet? That’s what leveraging disconnected logs and manual audits feels like. Unified observability is the fix—a dynamic graph that gives you a living, breathing map of every identity, entitlement, application, and their relationship. Automated sharing of signals and insights across teams slashes the risk of something getting missed. And with unified application insights, shadow IT gets pulled into the daylight, critical apps are prioritized for governance, and compliance reviews don’t devolve into endless games of “find the missing access.”

3. Practical application: Gartner IVIP and SailPoint Accelerated Application Management

The IVIP framework is more than a polished Gartner model—it’s a roadmap for turning identity chaos into clarity. But frameworks only work when paired with operational execution. Solutions like SailPoint Accelerated Application Management provides that execution, translating IVIP’s intent into measurable outcomes through continuous discovery, actionable insights, and prescriptive governance.

SailPoint Accelerated Application Management begins by eliminating the biggest barrier to effective governance: visibility. It continuously discovers every application in use—sanctioned or not—exposing Shadow IT and building a real-time, accurate inventory of your application ecosystem. By identifying tools outside IAM and surfacing accounts not connected to centralized identity controls, SailPoint Accelerated Application Management ensures every application, user, and access point is accounted for.

Visibility then evolves into intelligence. Analyzing usage patterns, privilege levels, and access frequency helps reveal how applications are truly used. This helps answer core governance questions: Which applications are at high risk and need to be brought under governance immediately? Which licenses provide no value? Who holds elevated access they no longer need? These insights reflect the IVIP framework’s emphasis on moving beyond simple “access/no access” checks toward a richer understanding of utilization, risk, and business impact.

Finally, SailPoint Accelerated Application Management turns insight into action. Its prescriptive, step-by-step guidance streamlines the onboarding of newly discovered applications, accelerates compliance efforts, and brings all critical apps under consistent, enforceable governance.

The Gartner IVIP framework defines the future of identity security—unified, intelligent, and comprehensive—but vision only matters when it’s operationalized. SailPoint Accelerated Application Management helps deliver that execution by automating discovery, revealing Shadow IT, and providing the actionable intelligence needed for real governance. It shifts organizations from reactive guesswork to proactive control, ensuring identity security keeps pace with the business.

Ready to bring even more clarity to your identity landscape and avoid the “we missed a critical gap” surprises? Explore Gartner’s latest paper, Reduce Your IAM Attack Surface Using Visibility, Observability, and Remediation.