SECAI Core · phase 10 of 15 · noun

Identity and access management

A security process that provides identification, authentication, and authorization mechanisms for users, computers, and other entities to work with organizational assets like networks, operating systems, and applications.

The Explain card

Plain English
Identity and access management (IAM) is the security process that provides identification, authentication and authorization for users, computers and other entities so they can work with organisational assets such as networks, operating systems and applications.
Example
A company's IAM system issues a verified identity to each AI agent, authenticates it with short-lived tokens, grants it only the tool permissions its role needs, and revokes everything automatically when the agent is decommissioned.
Why it matters
AI adds a flood of new non-human identities: agents, pipelines, service accounts. Without IAM governing them, they become orphaned keys with standing access that attackers love.
Hook
Who you are, how you prove it, what you get.

Word knowledge

How the word is built, where it came from, and what it sits beside in memory.

In a sentence

The hospital's identity and access management platform checks a clinician's badge and account before allowing the workstation to open an electronic health record.

Why these words
  • identity Middle French identité, from Late Latin identitas, sameness specifies the identity-related side of the compound
  • and Old English and, and joins two coordinated modifiers
  • access Middle French accès, from Latin accessus, approach specifies the access-related side of the compound
  • management manage plus -ment, with manage ultimately from Italian maneggiare, to handle serves as the head noun naming the organized practice
Where it came from
Origin
English enterprise-computing compound formed from identity, access, and management
Entered the language
2000s
What changed
Earlier identity-management and access-management vocabulary merged into one coordinated phrase, commonly shortened to IAM.
How it is spelled
Pattern
The phrase is an open compound whose four words remain separated by spaces.
Pattern
Identity uses the noun-forming ending -ity.
Pattern
Management retains the e of manage before -ment.

Spelled like

  • activity
  • security
  • engagement
  • achievement
Broken into chunks
  • identi
    • identify
    • identical
  • access
    • accessible
    • accessibility
  • manage
    • manager
    • manageable
  • ment
    • deployment
    • enforcement
What it sits beside

Same subject

Same shape

  • privileged access management
  • records management
  • configuration management

access-control vocabulary

identity infrastructure

  • directory service
  • identity provider

Where it sits in the deck

Phase 10: Identity, Access, and Cryptographic Foundations

Before examining threats to systems, establish the foundational security primitives — identity, authentication, authorisation, and the cryptography underpinning them.

Neighbours in this phase