Global digital infrastructure company achieves a tenfold increase in identity visibility

Navigating a fragmented identity landscape

At one time, identity management at this digital infrastructure company was a complex puzzle with missing pieces. For years, the core business grew rapidly, but security infrastructure struggled to keep pace. The identity framework relied heavily on a legacy Microsoft proprietary tool that moved data from Workday to Active Directory. Beyond that single connection, access management was, in many ways, the wild west.

"Things were kind of all over the place," explains the organization's Identity & Access Management Engineer. "You had manual provisioning processes for a lot of applications handled through ServiceNow incident tickets. You had folks that built their own automation tools because one didn't exist."

This fragmented approach caused severe operational bottlenecks. Without automated birthright provisioning, new hires faced staggering delays just to get the tools they needed to do their jobs. The organization's Identity Security Leader experienced this firsthand.

"I was not productive for almost four weeks when I joined because I was still figuring out all the access," he recalls. "What a new person should have access to based on their role in the company was not clear at all. It was all tribal knowledge."

Beyond productivity losses, manual processes introduced significant security and compliance risks. When employees changed roles or left the company, their access often lingered. Teams relied on scattered emails to notify system owners of terminations. "If you depend on a manual process, things will eventually get missed." Accounts remained active long after employees departed, creating vulnerabilities and wasting valuable licensing fees.

Furthermore, the company struggled with rubber stamping. Managers routinely approved access requests without verifying if the employee truly needed the permissions. There was no single source of truth. As the IAM Engineer put it, "We lacked an authoritative view of all the access that various folks had across the ecosystem, whether that be some of the big three cloud applications, on-premises applications, databases, or SaaS applications. There was really no holistic view of who a person was based off of the access that they had at the company."

Building an extensible, automated future

Recognizing that identity had become the new security perimeter, leadership pushed to consolidate their tools under a unified InfoSec umbrella. They needed a robust identity security solution that could handle their massive scale and complex environment. After evaluating several vendors, they chose SailPoint.

The selection came down to two major factors: automation capabilities and extensibility.

"When we evaluated SailPoint, they were kind of far and above in both of those categories." The organization was known for having three of every type of software, meaning they needed a tool with an incredibly broad range of connectors. SailPoint fit the bill perfectly, offering native connections alongside the ability to connect via REST, SOAP, or GraphQL APIs.

The organization went live with SailPoint in March 2024. The implementation team focused on a clear, immediate priority: replacing the legacy, end-of-life identity tool. By securely linking Workday and Active Directory, they established a firm foundation for automated account creation and termination. Once that core infrastructure was secure, the team expanded SailPoint's reach, eventually connecting it to 118 different applications.

The true power of the solution emerged through SailPoint workflows. Rather than just relying on out-of-the-box features, the organization built advanced automations tailored to their unique needs.

"Workflows just give us the ability to kind of do pretty much anything we want based off an identity," the IAM Engineer explains. "We are able to take automation or functions that would usually exist in the UI and build on top of those within our GitHub repositories. We've given our automation team the ability to create Active Directory groups via GitHub now, so they can just run a script and create whatever groups they need."

The team also leveraged SailPoint's Access Request Center and robust role-based provisioning to automate how users gain permissions, completely overhauling the old, cumbersome ServiceNow ticket system.

Tenfold visibility and gold-star automation

The transformation at the organization has been profound, with automation unlocking scalable, efficient identity security and a significantly better employee experience. The shift from manual patching to intelligent workflows drove measurable improvements across all access management processes.

One of the most striking achievements is in access provisioning scale and throughput. Prior to implementing SailPoint, monthly access requests averaged only 145, with much of the process handled manually. Post-SailPoint, as automation matured, demand surged to an average of 1,898 requests per month—a 1,210% increase. Even more impressive, the platform's throughput scaled even faster: monthly processing capacity jumped from 106 to 1,580 requests, a 1,390% improvement. The volume of approvals soared from 171 to over 2,000 per month, representing an increase of over 1,100%. Far from accumulating backlog, many recent months saw approval rates outpace new requests, indicating the backlog is being reduced, and that end-to-end provisioning cycles are shorter and more reliable.

This leap in operational efficiency has transformed how access is managed at enterprise scale. Manual roadblocks have been replaced by seamless, policy-driven automation. Security teams and business units alike now operate with far greater confidence, knowing access is governed, auditable, and delivered on time—with no corners cut and no one left waiting.

The most critical win came in the form of risk reduction and access clarity. "With SailPoint, there has been a tenfold increase in visibility and detection, which is one of the main tenants if you want to get to a true zero trust architecture," the IAM Engineer says. "Having visibility of what people have and what they're doing with it is key. Being able to connect to all of these different systems, seeing all the administrators, seeing all the people that have write access, and knowing exactly who has access to what on various applications is probably the biggest change in our security sense."

Automated terminations now ensure that when a user leaves the company, their access is immediately and completely revoked across the connected ecosystem, closing dangerous security gaps.

On the business side, end-users have loudly praised the new system. The dark days of waiting weeks for access are over. Role-based automated provisioning means employees get the tools they need the moment they join a specific department.

"The access request functionality is tenfold better. The big push at our company right now is automation. So, when we introduce automation, that's gold stars all around us as far as the company and end users are concerned."

The relationship with auditors has also improved. Because SailPoint logs every automated action, the organization can easily prove compliance for critical applications during complex audits.

Looking ahead: governing machine identities and AI

The organization is not slowing down. With human identities firmly under management, the team is setting its sights on the next frontier: machine identities and AI agents. They currently manage thousands of active service accounts and are eager to use SailPoint to govern their creation and lifecycle in a consistent, policy-driven way.

As artificial intelligence rapidly enters the corporate workspace, securing non-human identities is more critical than ever. "The introduction of these AI agents and shadow AI just poses so much risk," the IAM Engineer warns. "We really have to get a handle on what these agents are doing in our environment. It's honestly become probably the biggest threat to identity security almost overnight."

By securing their core infrastructure first and proving the immense value of automated identity governance, the organization has built a resilient, scalable foundation. With SailPoint, they are well-equipped to face the future of identity security head-on.