A globally recognized automotive leader, operating at the intersection of advanced manufacturing and high-stakes digital innovation, recently embarked on a transformative security initiative to overhaul its approach to privileged access. This Fortune 50 company, with a sprawling multi-cloud infrastructure across Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, recognized that its traditional security measures were no longer sufficient to protect its most critical assets. The decision to move away from a legacy Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution was not merely a technological upgrade but a fundamental strategic pivot towards a modern Zero Trust architecture. This shift was driven by an urgent need to eliminate the inherent risks and operational inefficiencies of an outdated system, paving the way for a more dynamic, context-aware security model designed for the complexities of a cloud-first enterprise. The company aimed to achieve Zero Standing Privilege (ZSP), a state where permissions are granted only when needed and for the shortest possible duration, thereby drastically reducing its attack surface and enhancing its overall security posture.
The Breaking Point of a Legacy System
The automotive manufacturer’s primary challenge stemmed from its incumbent PAM solution, which had evolved from a security tool into a significant liability and an operational bottleneck. This legacy system was fundamentally incompatible with the organization’s forward-looking security vision, which centered on implementing a Continuous Identity model to achieve ZSP. The tool’s deficiencies were numerous and critical, most notably its complete lack of visibility into the real-time context surrounding access requests—a foundational requirement for any modern Zero Trust strategy. The entire process for granting privileged access was mired in slow, manual workflows that required human intervention at every stage. This archaic procedure meant a user would submit a request, and an approver would then have to manually validate it, a process that could consume anywhere from several minutes to multiple hours. These delays directly impacted the security team’s ability to respond to incidents swiftly, leaving the organization vulnerable during critical moments.
The manual verification process was not only time-consuming but also fraught with the potential for human error, creating a persistent security risk. For instance, an approver was required to personally cross-reference a user’s request with a corresponding change ticket in a system like ServiceNow, confirming its validity and correct assignment. This manual check was an inefficient use of skilled personnel and introduced a significant chance for mistakes that could lead to unauthorized access. Furthermore, the legacy system lacked any capability to perform a real-time check of the user’s security posture, such as verifying the health of their device before granting elevated permissions. The inherent presence of standing privileges, a default state in the old system, created a perpetually expanded attack surface. This constant exposure meant that if a privileged account were compromised, an attacker would have persistent access to critical systems, exposing the company to unnecessary and severe risk. The system was, in essence, a relic of a previous era, ill-equipped for the dynamic nature of modern cloud environments.
The Search for a Cloud-Native Solution
Driven by the imperative to mitigate risk and modernize its security posture, the company’s security team initiated a comprehensive search for a truly modern privileged access solution. They began by evaluating several alternatives, including other traditional PAM vendors who claimed to offer updated platforms. However, they quickly discovered that most of these solutions, despite newer interfaces, suffered from the same foundational flaw: they were architecturally focused on legacy, on-premises environments. These systems were not inherently designed for the dynamic, API-driven nature of a cloud-first enterprise that relies on agility and automation. They continued to treat access as a static, binary concept rather than a dynamic privilege that should be granted based on real-time context. The team realized that simply replacing one legacy tool with a slightly newer version of the same architecture would not address the core problem and would fail to align with their Zero Trust objectives.
The critical missing component in these traditional offerings was a genuine identity data fabric. This concept refers to a sophisticated integration layer capable of ingesting, correlating, and analyzing a rich variety of signals from disparate business and security systems in real time. The automotive company required a solution that could seamlessly connect with its entire technology stack—which used Microsoft Entra ID as its central Single Sign-On (SSO) provider—and leverage this integrated data to make intelligent, automated access decisions across its multi-cloud footprint. The ideal platform needed to understand the “who, what, where, when, and why” behind every access request by pulling context from various sources. This included business context from ticketing systems, security posture data from endpoint protection platforms, and identity information from directories. Without this interconnected data fabric, any solution would operate in a silo, unable to provide the holistic, context-aware security the company required to move forward.
A New Paradigm with an Identity Data Fabric
The company’s evaluation process ultimately led them to a vendor whose approach was fundamentally different, built around the power of an Identity Data Fabric. Unlike legacy tools that operate as isolated silos, this platform was designed to connect to and ingest context from the company’s entire ecosystem, enabling a significant paradigm shift in how access decisions were made. Instead of asking the static, permission-based question, “Does this user have the permission to access this resource?”, the platform could answer the far more intelligent and dynamic question, “Should this user be granted access to this resource right now, based on everything we currently know?” This new model allowed the company to transition from a slow, unverifiable manual process to one that was automated, intelligent, and nearly instantaneous. The platform could pull in business context, such as an open and assigned ServiceNow ticket, security posture data like a low-risk score from CrowdStrike, identity information including user attributes from Entra ID, and governance data from a platform like SailPoint, making each signal a critical factor in the real-time authorization process.
To validate these capabilities, the company engaged in a rigorous, three-week proof of value (POV). The POV was meticulously designed to prove that the platform could deliver on all of its core requirements for achieving a Zero Trust architecture. During this period, the solution successfully demonstrated its ability to integrate seamlessly with the company’s diverse identity and security ecosystem, including Entra ID, CrowdStrike, Salesforce, JIRA, ServiceNow, and SailPoint. It showcased the creation of sophisticated, human-readable policies that evaluated real-time context. A key use case demonstrated an engineer being granted privileged access to cloud infrastructure only when they had an active, assigned change request ticket and their device was deemed compliant by CrowdStrike. The system also successfully orchestrated session-bound, temporary privileged access to the company’s infrastructure in AWS and Azure, effectively eliminating the need for standing privileges and delivering clear, immediate visibility into all access decisions through real-time Slack notifications.
Immediate Impact and a Foundation for the Future
The results of implementing the new platform were both immediate and transformative, fundamentally altering the company’s security operations and risk profile. One of the most significant outcomes was a drastic reduction in the time required to grant privileged access, which plummeted from minutes or hours to mere seconds. This was achieved as automated policies instantly verified the necessary context without any human intervention, allowing developers and engineers to access the systems they needed without delay. Consequently, the need for human approvers to manually check tickets and other contextual information was completely eliminated, which significantly reduced operational overhead and removed the risk of human error from the approval process. The business case for the purchase was heavily influenced by the expected cost savings from retiring these manual workflows in both PAM and Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) processes. Security teams also gained unprecedented, real-time insight into access events via Slack notifications, which substantially improved their monitoring and auditing capabilities.
Looking beyond the initial implementation, the automotive leader viewed this new platform as far more than just a PAM replacement; it was seen as the foundational layer of an enterprise-wide Continuous Identity architecture. The initial phase focused on securing privileged access to cloud infrastructure, but the long-term vision was to establish a truly adaptive security posture where access decisions and permissions could dynamically change in real time. This strategy was designed to mirror the rapid evolution of the company’s business needs and the ever-changing threat landscape. This successful transition served as a powerful illustration of a broader industry trend, where leading enterprises are increasingly leveraging identity data fabrics to automate security, reduce risk, and accelerate business in the modern cloud era. The project demonstrated that by placing contextual identity at the core of a security strategy, organizations could move beyond outdated, static defenses to build a more resilient and agile enterprise.
