A leading Fortune 50 automotive manufacturer, navigating the complexities of a sprawling multi-cloud infrastructure across Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, found its security aspirations and operational agility severely constrained by its outdated Privileged Access Management (PAM) system. This legacy solution was no longer just a piece of technology; it had evolved into a significant security risk and a formidable operational bottleneck, standing in direct opposition to the company’s strategic vision of embracing a comprehensive Zero Trust security model. The imperative to move beyond this antiquated framework became crystal clear as the organization set its sights on achieving Zero Standing Privilege (ZSP) and implementing a Continuous Identity model, objectives that were fundamentally unattainable with the incumbent tools. This strategic pivot from a reactive, permission-centric paradigm to a proactive, context-aware security architecture marks a critical evolution that many global enterprises are now actively pursuing to secure their digital frontiers.
The Crippling Limitations of an Outdated System
The core problem with the automaker’s existing PAM solution was its inherent incompatibility with modern security principles. It offered absolutely no visibility into the real-time context surrounding access requests, a foundational requirement for any credible Zero Trust strategy. The entire process for granting elevated permissions was mired in slow, manual workflows that demanded human intervention at every step. When an engineer required access, they had to submit a formal request, which then waited for an approver to manually validate its legitimacy. This verification process, which could take anywhere from several minutes to multiple hours, was dangerously susceptible to human error. For instance, an approver was tasked with personally cross-referencing a corresponding change request ticket in a system like ServiceNow to confirm it was valid and correctly assigned to the user. This manual gatekeeping not only introduced significant delays that directly hampered the security team’s ability to respond to incidents swiftly but also perpetuated a model where standing privileges were the default, creating a permanently expanded attack surface that exposed the company to constant and unnecessary risk.
Beyond the operational friction, the legacy system harbored critical security blind spots that were unacceptable in a modern threat landscape. The tool lacked any mechanism to perform a real-time check of a user’s security posture, such as the health of their device or their current risk score, before granting elevated permissions. This meant that a compromised endpoint could, in theory, be used to gain privileged access to critical infrastructure, bypassing what should have been an essential layer of defense. The inherent delays in the access-granting workflow were not merely an inconvenience; they directly impacted business agility, slowing down development cycles and impeding the pace of innovation. The security team was forced into an untenable position, choosing between enforcing a slow, cumbersome process that frustrated engineers and delayed projects or relaxing controls and accepting a much higher level of risk. This fundamental conflict between security and speed was the primary catalyst for the company’s decision to seek a new solution that could embed security seamlessly into the fabric of its fast-paced, cloud-native operations.
A Fruitless Search Among Traditional Vendors
Driven by the pressing need to reduce risk and modernize its security posture, the company’s security team embarked on a thorough search for a truly contemporary privileged access solution. They evaluated several alternative options, including offerings from other traditional PAM vendors that promised more up-to-date features. However, they quickly discovered a disheartening pattern: most of these solutions, while perhaps newer, were still architecturally anchored in the past. They were fundamentally designed for legacy, on-premises environments and were ill-equipped to handle the dynamic, API-driven nature of a cloud-first enterprise. These tools continued to operate as isolated silos, incapable of providing the holistic, interconnected view of identity and access required for an effective Zero Trust implementation. The core architectural flaw was their inability to deeply integrate with the broader modern IT ecosystem and leverage real-time data from various sources to inform and automate intelligent access decisions, which ultimately left the company still searching for a more innovative and forward-thinking approach.
The critical component that was conspicuously absent from these traditional offerings was a genuine identity data fabric. This concept describes a sophisticated, unifying integration layer capable of ingesting, correlating, and analyzing a rich variety of signals from disparate business and security systems in real time. The automotive giant required a solution that could seamlessly connect to its entire technology stack, which used Microsoft Entra ID as its central Single Sign-On (SSO) provider, and then use this wealth of integrated data to make intelligent, automated access decisions across its vast multi-cloud footprint. Traditional PAM tools were simply not built for this level of deep integration and contextual intelligence. They could not ingest business context from ServiceNow, security posture data from CrowdStrike, or governance information from SailPoint and use it to make a real-time authorization decision. This realization forced the company to look beyond the established market players for a solution that was architected from the ground up to match its advanced, data-driven security vision.
A Paradigm Shift with a Data-Driven Approach
The company’s extensive evaluation process ultimately led them to a solution provider whose approach was fundamentally different and centered on the power of an Identity Data Fabric. This proved to be the technological breakthrough the team had been seeking. Unlike legacy tools that operate as isolated security fortresses, this modern platform was designed to connect to and ingest rich context from the company’s entire digital ecosystem. This capability enabled a complete paradigm shift in how access decisions were made. The security question evolved from the static, permission-based query of, “Does this user have the permission to access this resource?” to the dynamic, context-based inquiry: “Should this user be granted access to this resource right now, based on everything we currently know?” This transformative shift allowed the company to move away from its slow, unverifiable manual processes to a new model that was automated, intelligent, and nearly instantaneous, finally aligning its security posture with the speed of modern business operations and development.
To validate these advanced capabilities, the automotive manufacturer engaged in a rigorous, three-week proof of value (POV) designed to prove that the platform could deliver on all of its core requirements. During this intensive testing period, the solution successfully demonstrated its ability to integrate seamlessly with the company’s diverse identity and security ecosystem, connecting with Entra ID, CrowdStrike, Salesforce, JIRA, ServiceNow, and SailPoint to prove the flexibility of its Identity Data Fabric. It showcased the creation of sophisticated yet human-readable policies that evaluated real-time context. A key use case demonstrated was an engineer being granted session-bound, privileged access to cloud infrastructure only when they had an active, assigned change request ticket in ServiceNow and their device was deemed compliant with a low-risk score from CrowdStrike. The system successfully orchestrated this Just-in-Time access to the company’s multi-cloud infrastructure in AWS and Azure, effectively eliminating the need for standing privileges and delivering clear visibility into all access decisions through real-time notifications.
The Foundation for a Continuous Identity Future
The impact of implementing the new platform was immediate and transformative, delivering on the promise of a more agile and secure access model. The time required to grant privileged access plummeted from minutes or even hours to mere seconds, as automated policies instantly verified the necessary business and security context without any need for human intervention. This complete automation of the approval workflow eliminated the need for human approvers to manually check tickets and other contextual information, which not only significantly reduced operational overhead but also drastically lowered the risk of human error. The business case for the purchase was heavily influenced by the substantial cost savings expected from retiring these manual processes in both PAM and Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) workflows. Furthermore, security teams gained unprecedented, real-time insight into access events via Slack notifications, which substantially improved their monitoring and auditing capabilities, providing a level of dynamic oversight that was previously nonexistent.
This project represented far more than just a successful replacement of an outdated tool; it established the foundational layer for the automaker’s enterprise-wide security architecture of the future. While the initial implementation was sharply focused on securing privileged access to critical cloud infrastructure, the long-term vision was to establish this new platform as the cornerstone of a comprehensive Continuous Identity strategy. This strategic vision aimed to create a truly adaptive security posture where access decisions and permissions could dynamically change in real time, mirroring the rapid evolution of the company’s business needs and the ever-changing threat landscape. The successful transition served as a powerful illustration of a broader industry trend where forward-thinking enterprises leveraged identity data fabrics to not only automate security but also to accelerate business innovation in the cloud era.
