5 IAM Technologies Stuck in Pilot and How to Move Forward

Deepfake detection tools have gained attention as AI-generated impersonation attacks become more common, yet many adopters still rate them as low value during pilots. These tools often perform differently in real-world conditions than in controlled environments, and the market landscape is still immature. To maximize value, organizations should deploy deepfake detection as part of a defense-in-depth strategy alongside strong authentication, meeting monitoring and targeted security awareness training for high-risk employees.

Many organizations are piloting identity verification (IDV) for workforce use cases, but customer-focused solutions often miss important context. Organizations that choose vendors without workforce-specific capabilities can face higher implementation costs, longer deployment timelines and weaker stakeholder support. CISOs should prioritize vendors with workforce IDV expertise, look for granular control over employee biometric data and combine IDV with other controls, such as device profiling, location intelligence and multifactor authentication.

Decentralized identity approaches continue to attract interest, but many adopters still perceive them as low value. Gartner cites a nascent vendor landscape, ongoing integration requirements and potential market instability as major barriers.

Organizations can improve outcomes by focusing on targeted use cases that do not require broad ecosystem adoption. Embedding decentralized identity initiatives within existing IAM governance and identity governance and administration (IGA) processes can also help reduce identity sprawl and improve long-term value.

Identity wallets are intended to provide greater control over identity data, but adoption remains difficult due to interoperability gaps, high integration costs and user adoption challenges. To maximize value, cybersecurity leaders should begin with trusted ecosystems and authoritative issuers where possible. They should also evaluate emerging wallet use cases on a case-by-case basis while maintaining support for traditional identity processes.

Secrets management remains an important technology, but many organizations struggle to unlock its full value. Gartner data shows that only 1% of organizations fully automate secrets rotation, limiting the impact of these tools. Confusion between secrets and rapdly proliferating machine identities can also create process inconsistencies and technical debt. Heads of cybersecurity should centralize machine IAM governance, reduce reliance on static credentials and establish governance guardrails for agentic AI identities before adoption scales.