Legacy IAM Can't Keep Up
Today's security and identity leaders are under pressure on two fronts: minimize friction for customers, your extended workforce, and AI agents while keeping security airtight. At the same time, AI is giving fraudsters new tools to exploit vulnerabilities, and digital users are demanding faster, simpler, and more personalized experiences at home and at work.
Legacy IAM systems weren't built for this. Designed for enforcement rather than engagement, they're now creating barriers that frustrate users, drain productivity, drive up support costs, and expose organizations to increased security and compliance risk. Repeated password resets, rigid multi-factor authentication (MFA) policies, and disjointed login experiences drive up costs, slow down business, and erode trust.
Every failed login or manual password reset adds to IT overhead and makes it harder to justify the current identity model to leadership.
Modernizing your IAM architecture doesn't have to mean ripping and replacing your existing systems. You can layer on identity services that fill in gaps, combining adaptive security with seamless access, responding to context and risk in real time, and delivering protection without disruption.
Solving this Identity Challenge
Solution: Modernize with the right identity provider (IdP) that understands your organization's needs and challenges to ensure your identity strategy is future-ready.
Result: WWK, a leading German insurance company, improved security and employee, partner, and customer interactions while simultaneously bolstering their security posture.2
Remove Friction by Removing Silos
Fragmented identity systems create a false sense of control. In reality, they open gaps between tools, delay threat response, and multiply overhead.
When each user group has its own access method, directory, and authentication logic across legacy and cloud environments, security and IAM teams struggle to enforce consistent policies or spot anomalies. Visibility is limited, threat response is delayed, and compliance becomes more complex, especially when teams lack a single source of truth across identity systems. These silos lead to redundant administration, longer onboarding cycles, and poor visibility across environments.
Security gaps widen. Attackers exploit inconsistencies between apps, especially when third-party access, mergers, or cloud migrations introduce new vulnerabilities. Inconsistent identity policies also complicate audits, regulatory reporting, and access reviews. Siloed IAM isn't just inefficient, it's risky.
Solving this Identity Challenge
Solution: Unify your IAM with a single platform that spans customers, workforce, B2B (third-party and partner), and non-human identities. Manage every user relationship and drive enterprise growth through capabilities like verification, fraud prevention, and orchestration consistently across whichever IdP you already have in place.
Result: DB Schenker, a global logistics leader, implemented centralized IAM for over 300,000 employee, contractor, partner, and customer identities, resulting in a 75% reduction in the time it takes to complete system integrations.4
Rethink the Security / Friction Relationship
Security and IAM teams often believe "more friction equals more security," because outdated IAM systems rely on static MFA, manual approvals, and one-size-fits-all controls that slow down everyone. Employees waste time with unnecessary step-ups. Customers abandon accounts during login or checkout. Third parties, partners, business customers, along with non-human agents acting on their behalf, can't access the systems they need to work effectively with your business. These static, blanket controls don't just frustrate users, they can lead to riskier behaviors, like sharing credentials or seeking workarounds, which weaken your security posture.
Security doesn't need to be disruptive. When authentication adapts in real time, based on user behavior, risk signals, and context, you protect the business without punishing trusted users.
Solving this Identity Challenge
Solution: Shift from static policies to adaptive MFA and dynamic orchestration. Analyze behavior and context in real time, automate decisions and only interrupt users when risk is high, keeping the experience smooth for legitimate users while thwarting bad actors.
Result: DigiKey modernized their identity experience and realized substantial gains in employee productivity and experience, reducing the need for daily MFA prompts by ~82%.5
UX Combines with Security to Drive Revenue
Your IAM platform isn't just a security layer. It is a strategic business enabler. When identity works, it empowers productive workforces, enables secure partner ecosystems, delivers consistent, intuitive customer experiences across apps and channels, and lays the groundwork for safely introducing AI agents into those journeys. And when it doesn't? It creates security gaps, frustrates users, and drains resources, while also making it harder for security leaders to prove ROI and for identity leaders to scale access intelligently.
Modern IAM strategies, powered by shared capabilities like verification, fraud detection, and journey orchestration that can run across your existing identity providers, combine strong security with seamless UX to directly impact revenue. By unifying policies, leveraging behavior-based, intelligent insights, and orchestrating access dynamically, they reduce friction at every touchpoint while strengthening risk posture. The results are higher conversion, greater retention, and fewer costly breaches, making identity not just a box to check, but a growth engine.
Solving this Identity Challenge
Solution: Capabilities like journey orchestration and identity verification not only increase security and reduce fraud losses, they improve user satisfaction and reduce support burdens. The result? More revenue.
Result: Truckstop reduced $34 million in fraud exposure by consolidating identity verification into a single, risk-aware platform.7
Migration Isn't the Treacherous Path You Might Imagine
The road to modernization doesn't require a rip-and-replace approach. Start with a strategic audit of your current IAM environment. Identify silos, friction points, and compliance gaps. Then phase your transformation, migrating high-impact journeys first while leveraging pre-built integrations and low-code orchestration to minimize downtime and support phased-adoption, without disrupting your users or your business.
Many IT teams also start by layering shared identity capabilities—such as verification, fraud detection, and orchestration—on top of their existing IdP to close gaps and prove value before they touch core systems. Because every day with outdated identity tools increases your risk and reduces your agility.
Security and IT leaders can start with the riskiest or most fragmented identity flows, demonstrate early wins, and scale with confidence.
Solving this Identity Challenge
Solution: Simplify and speed up your modernization using automated migration tools that reduce manual effort, reduce risk, minimize downtime, and ensure a seamless shift.
Result: A global manufacturer realized 99.99% uptime and reduced recovery time from 6 hours to under 1 hour after moving to a modern SaaS platform.8
Start Your Modernization Today
Advanced IAM helps enterprises eliminate identity friction without sacrificing security. With a unified platform, or by layering on new services to fill gaps quickly, you can secure every user, streamline every journey, and adapt to whatever comes next.
By aligning identity with business outcomes, organizations can unlock greater agility, reduce IT overhead, accelerate digital initiatives, and empower teams to improve customer satisfaction, employee productivity, and partner trust. Whether you’re enabling hybrid work, integrating new partners, or scaling to new markets, a strong identity foundation, and the shared capabilities that sit across your existing providers, is what lets you move faster, safer, and smarter. With modern IAM, you no longer have to choose between stopping threats and enabling the business.
You can do both–securely, efficiently, and at scale.
¹ Ping Identity - The Great Technology Wave
² Ping Identity - DigiKey Customer Story
⁴ Ping Identity - DB Schenker Customer Story
⁵ Ping Identity - WWK Customer Story