There was a time when identity lived in one place. A single LDAP directory, an HR database, or one IAM portal handled who could access what.
That reality is gone.
Today, identities are scattered across SaaS platforms, on-prem systems, cloud services like IaaS and PaaS, custom-built apps, and a growing number of shadow applications. Each environment creates its own users, permissions, and authentication rules, often with little connection to everything else.
Most identity and access management (IAM) or identity governance tools only cover what’s fully onboarded and properly integrated. That’s just part of the picture. What’s left behind is a large, unseen layer of accounts and access paths that are not verified, not monitored, and not properly protected. This is what many security teams now call identity dark matter.
How Identity Becomes Fragmented
Every new or modernized application needs work before it can be governed properly. Connectors have to be built, schemas mapped, roles defined, and entitlements cataloged. That process takes time, money, and skilled staff.
In reality, many applications never reach that stage. They go live quickly, users are added, permissions grow, and governance never catches up. Over time, organizations end up with unmanaged identities and access operating quietly outside official controls.
Beyond human users, the problem becomes even bigger.
The Rise of Non-Human Identities
APIs, bots, service accounts, and AI-driven agents now authenticate and act across modern infrastructure. These non-human identities are often created automatically, reused across systems, or forgotten entirely. Ownership is unclear, lifecycle management is missing, and oversight is minimal.
Even in environments where human identities are well managed, these machine-based accounts form the deepest and least visible layer of identity dark matter. Traditional IAM tools were never built to handle this scale or complexity.
What Makes Up Identity Dark Matter
As organizations modernize, identity risk tends to fall into a few high-impact categories:
- Shadow applications that operate outside formal governance because onboarding them is seen as too slow or expensive
- Non-human identities such as APIs, bots, and service accounts acting with little or no oversight
- Orphaned and stale accounts, where access remains long after it’s needed. Many organizations report thousands of orphaned accounts, and a significant portion of identities go unused for months
- Agent-based AI identities that make decisions and grant access independently, bypassing traditional identity models
Why This Is a Real Security Problem
Unmanaged identities create blind spots, and attackers thrive in blind spots.
A significant portion of cloud breaches now involve dormant or forgotten credentials. When security teams cannot see an identity, they cannot assess its risk, audit its activity, or respond quickly when something goes wrong.
The biggest dangers include:
- Credential abuse, which remains one of the most common breach methods
- False confidence, where organizations believe access is under control when it’s not
- Compliance gaps, since unmanaged identities often fall outside audits and reporting
- Hidden attack paths, allowing lateral movement, insider abuse, and privilege escalation
Rethinking Identity Governance
Solving this problem requires a shift in mindset.
Instead of relying only on configuration-based IAM, organizations need evidence-based identity governance. That means focusing on visibility and behavior, not just policies on paper.
This is where the idea of identity observability comes in. The goal is to continuously see how identities are created, how they’re used, and how they behave across every environment.
Security researchers and vendors increasingly point to a three-part approach:
- See everything by collecting identity telemetry directly from applications, not just through standard IAM connectors
- Prove everything with unified audit trails that clearly show who accessed what, when, and why
- Govern everywhere, including managed systems, shadow apps, non-human identities, and AI agents
When telemetry, auditing, and orchestration are unified, identity dark matter stops being guesswork and becomes measurable risk.
A Growing Industry Focus
Companies like Orchid Security argue that the future of cyber resilience depends on treating identity the same way organizations treat observability in infrastructure. That means understanding not just how identity is configured, but how it actually behaves in real environments.
The broader message is clear: identity security can no longer rely on assumptions. In a world of SaaS sprawl, automation, and AI-driven systems, governance has to be visible, continuous, and provable.
Anything less leaves too much of the identity universe in the dark.