AI powers identity speed.

By Maurice Luizink, CTO

For twenty years, we’ve been asking the same question in Identity and Access Management: “Who has access to what?” We’ve spent billions on sophisticated governance platforms to answer it. And yet, for most organizations, the honest answer is still a shrug, followed by an IT ticket that takes three days to resolve.
This isn’t a technology problem. It’s a business model problem. We’ve created a system that relies on a small priesthood of technical experts to translate simple business questions into complex queries. I call this the “Expert Tax,” and it’s the single biggest bottleneck to achieving real security and agility. The era of paying that tax is over.

AI as a Breaking Point for Traditional IAM Models

The arrival of mature AI, particularly Large Language Models, isn’t just another feature update. It is a tectonic shift that is breaking this old model apart. We are moving from a world where business users are forced to think like database admins to one where the tools finally think like a business user.

This reckoning is happening on two main fronts.

1. Conversational IAM: From Queries to Intent First, in Workforce IAM, the command line is being replaced by conversation. Instead of writing complex rules and policies, we can now simply state our intent in natural language. The best new tools aren’t just layering AI on top of old frameworks; they are built on a foundation of “Conversational IAM.” This means a security leader can ask, “Show me all developers with access to production databases who haven’t used MFA in the last 30 days,” and get an answer in seconds, not days. This is the end of the query bottleneck.

2. Adaptive Trust in CIAM: Security Without Friction Second, in Customer IAM (CIAM), AI is dismantling the false choice between security and user experience. For too long, we’ve relied on static, brittle rules that either frustrate good customers or fail to stop determined attackers. The new paradigm is Continuous Adaptive Risk and Trust. By analyzing thousands of signals in real-time, from behavioral biometrics and device integrity to network patterns, AI-driven engines can make instantaneous, nuanced decisions. They can spot a bot, identify a fraudulent transaction, or recognize a legitimate user on a new device, all without the user even noticing. This is security that is felt but not seen.

AI-Integrated vs. AI-Native IAM Tools

Of course, the established IAM giants see this shift. They are integrating AI into their platforms, and that’s a good thing. But bolting AI onto a legacy architecture is not the same as building for an AI-native world. The real disruption is coming from a new class of tools designed from the ground up to be conversational, adaptive, and intuitive.

The Intelligent Identity Fabric

The future isn’t about ripping and replacing your foundational systems. It’s about creating an intelligent identity fabric that integrates the stability of your core platforms with the speed and agility of these new AI-native tools. This is where we see our role at Booleans: not as a vendor of one solution, but as the architect of a hybrid strategy that delivers the best of both worlds.

Building Trust in an AI-Driven Future

This journey isn’t without its challenges. We have to be smart about AI “hallucinations” and build systems with verifiable trust. But these are solvable engineering problems. The bigger mistake would be to ignore the fundamental shift that is already underway.
The question is no longer just “who has access to what?” The real question is, “How fast can you make intelligent decisions about identity?” In this new era, the answer will be measured in seconds, not days.