Modifying identity governance frameworks to address authentication and security challenges in machine-to-machine communication networks

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Executive Summary

The exponential growth of machine-to-machine (M2M) communication has fundamentally altered the identity governance landscape. By 2025, non-human identities (NHIs) outnumber human identities by a ratio of 90:1 in many enterprises, creating unprecedented challenges for traditional identity and access management (IAM) frameworks. This whitepaper examines how current identity governance frameworks, originally designed for human-centric environments, must evolve to address the unique authentication and security challenges posed by M2M networks.

Our analysis reveals that traditional frameworks fail in M2M environments due to scalability limitations, signaling congestion, lack of group-based identity models, and insufficient mechanisms for decentralized trust. To address these challenges, organizations must implement four key modifications: group-based authentication protocols that reduce signaling overhead, lightweight cryptographic methods suitable for resource-constrained devices, decentralized trust models using blockchain and distributed ledger technologies, and dynamic context-aware identity management systems.

Key findings indicate that organizations implementing these modifications experience up to 80% reduction in security risks, 70% decrease in role management efforts, and significantly improved operational resilience. However, adoption remains limited, with only 38% of organizations having real-time visibility into their machine identities and 66% still relying on manual processes for machine identity management.

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