IAM/IGA vs Ubiq

Executive Summary

Identity and Access Management, or IAM, helps organizations authenticate users, applications, devices, service accounts, and other identities, then authorize access to systems and resources. Identity Governance and Administration, or IGA, helps organizations manage identity lifecycles, access requests, provisioning, deprovisioning, access reviews, certifications, entitlements, and compliance workflows.

These controls are valuable and should remain part of the architecture.

IAM and IGA address important parts of the security model. IAM helps determine whether an identity can access a system, application, database, API, cloud resource, or workflow. IGA helps govern whether that access is appropriate, approved, reviewed, and removed when no longer needed.

Ubiq addresses a different layer of the problem: protecting sensitive values themselves and governing whether users, applications, service accounts, APIs, pipelines, BI tools, AI workflows, and downstream systems can access those values in cleartext at runtime.

The strongest model is layered. Use IAM and IGA to govern identity, authentication, authorization, provisioning, access reviews, entitlements, and least-privilege access to systems. Use Ubiq for identity-aware runtime protection of sensitive fields and records after access to a system has been granted.

Key Takeaways

• IAM, IGA, and Ubiq runtime sensitive data protection solve different problems and should be viewed as complementary controls.
• IAM is strong for authentication, authorization, SSO, MFA, conditional access, federation, service identities, and access to systems.
• IGA is strong for identity lifecycle management, provisioning, deprovisioning, access requests, access reviews, certifications, entitlements, and compliance workflows.
• Ubiq protects selected sensitive values directly and controls whether an identity or workflow can access those values in cleartext at runtime.
• IAM and IGA help govern who can access systems. Ubiq helps govern what sensitive values those identities and workflows can see after access is granted.

Control Boundary View

Where IAM and IGA Help

IAM and IGA provide foundational controls for identity security and access governance.

IAM systems help teams:

• Authenticate users, applications, devices, and service accounts
• Enforce single sign-on
• Enforce multi-factor authentication
• Apply conditional access policies
• Federate identities across systems
• Manage OAuth, OIDC, SAML, SCIM, and related identity protocols
• Manage human and non-human identities
• Control access to applications, APIs, cloud resources, and enterprise systems
• Reduce reliance on local accounts and static credentials
• Support adaptive or risk-based access decisions

IGA systems help teams:

• Manage identity lifecycles
• Provision and deprovision access
• Manage joiner, mover, and leaver workflows
• Govern entitlements and access rights
• Run access reviews and certification campaigns
• Support access request and approval workflows
• Identify excessive or inappropriate access
• Support least-privilege access programs
• Support audit, compliance, and regulatory requirements
• Govern access across on-premises, cloud, SaaS, and enterprise applications

These capabilities are valuable for enterprise security.

They help answer questions such as:

• Who is this identity?
• Is this identity authenticated?
• Should this identity be allowed into this application or system?
• Which roles, groups, and entitlements does this identity have?
• Was this access approved?
• Is this access still appropriate?
• Should this access be revoked?
• Which users or service accounts have excessive access?
• Which access rights require certification?

For many organizations, IAM and IGA are essential.

However, they primarily govern identity and system access. They do not, by themselves, provide a universal runtime protection model that determines whether a specific identity or workflow should receive sensitive field or record values in cleartext after access has been granted.

Where IAM and IGA Are Not Designed to Go

IAM and IGA are not usually designed to be the primary sensitive value enforcement layer inside every application, database, warehouse, API, BI tool, AI workflow, or downstream system.

This distinction matters because granting access to a system is not the same as authorizing access to every sensitive value inside that system.

Sensitive values may be accessed, copied, transformed, exported, joined, materialized, logged, embedded, indexed, or consumed by:

• Internal users
• Developers
• Administrators
• Application services
• Service accounts
• APIs
• ETL and ELT pipelines
• Event streams
• Databases
• Warehouses
• BI tools
• Reporting systems
• Data science notebooks
• AI and RAG workflows
• MCP-based tools and agents
• Vector stores
• Vendor feeds
• CSV, JSON, Excel, Parquet, or database exports
• Downstream systems
• Temporary development or test environments

IAM can determine whether an identity can access a system. IGA can determine whether that access was approved, provisioned, reviewed, and certified. But once the identity is inside the system or workflow, IAM and IGA may not determine whether each sensitive field or record should be revealed in cleartext.

That is the architectural gap Ubiq is designed to address.

Comparison Matrix

Key Architectural Differences

System Access vs Sensitive Value Exposure

IAM helps determine whether an identity can access a system.

IGA helps determine whether that access is appropriate, approved, reviewed, and governed.

Ubiq helps determine whether that identity or workflow should receive sensitive values in cleartext.

This distinction is critical.

A user may be allowed to access a CRM application, database, warehouse, BI dashboard, or AI tool. That does not mean the user should see every sensitive value inside that system.

Ubiq adds runtime protection at the sensitive value layer.

Entitlements vs Field and Record-Level Cleartext Control

IAM and IGA often manage entitlements such as:

• Application access
• Role membership
• Group membership
• Database access
• Cloud resource access
• BI workspace access
• API access
• Admin privileges
• Service account permissions

These controls are essential.

However, an entitlement usually does not express every sensitive field or record decision.

With Ubiq, the question is not only:

Does this identity have access to this system or resource?

The question becomes:

Is this identity or workflow allowed to see this specific sensitive value in cleartext right now?

That distinction matters when many users or workflows share the same system but require different levels of sensitive data visibility.

Least Privilege to Systems vs Least Privilege to Sensitive Values

IAM and IGA support least-privilege access by limiting which systems, roles, groups, and resources identities can access.

Ubiq extends least privilege to sensitive values.

This matters because users, service accounts, and applications often need access to a system to do their jobs, but they do not always need access to every sensitive field in cleartext.

Examples include:

• A support user needs access to a customer record, but not full payment data.
• A data analyst needs aggregate analytics, but not raw identifiers.
• A service account needs to process a workflow, but not reveal sensitive values.
• A BI user needs a dashboard, but not direct cleartext access to restricted fields.
• An AI agent needs context, but not raw regulated data.
• A downstream system needs protected values, not plaintext values.

Ubiq provides runtime controls for this sensitive value-level least privilege.

Identity Context vs Data Enforcement

IAM and IGA produce valuable identity context.

Examples include:

• User identity
• Group membership
• Role
• Department
• Region
• Employment status
• Application entitlement
• Service account identity
• Access approval status
• Access certification status

Ubiq can use identity and policy context to make runtime data protection decisions.

This lets organizations connect identity governance to data exposure:

Identity determines who is asking. Ubiq determines whether the sensitive value should be revealed.

Access Reviews vs Runtime Decisions

IGA access reviews and certifications help organizations periodically validate whether users should retain access.

These workflows are important for compliance and least privilege.

However, access reviews are not the same as runtime enforcement.

A user may pass an access review and still not need cleartext access to every sensitive value in every context.

Ubiq provides runtime decisions at the moment sensitive data is accessed.

Identity Boundary vs Data Lifecycle Protection

IAM and IGA are strongest while access remains within governed identity and application boundaries.

But sensitive data often moves.

It may be exported to files, copied into downstream systems, replicated into analytics platforms, written into logs, joined into derived datasets, consumed by BI tools, embedded into vector stores, or used by AI workflows.

Ubiq helps maintain protection of selected sensitive values across the data lifecycle. If protected values are copied, exported, embedded, indexed, logged, or consumed downstream, they can remain protected unless an authorized runtime path reveals cleartext.

When to Use Both

IAM, IGA, and Ubiq are not mutually exclusive.

Organizations should continue using IAM and IGA for:

• Authentication
• Single sign-on
• Multi-factor authentication
• Conditional access
• Federation
• Identity lifecycle management
• Provisioning and deprovisioning
• Access requests and approvals
• Entitlement governance
• Access reviews and certifications
• Least-privilege access to systems
• Service account and non-human identity governance
• Audit and compliance workflows

Ubiq should be considered when organizations also need to:

• Protect sensitive values directly
• Govern cleartext access by identity, role, application, dataset, and context
• Apply consistent protection across applications, APIs, databases, warehouses, BI tools, and AI workflows
• Limit blast radius from compromised credentials, service accounts, tokens, API keys, or overprivileged users
• Restrict cleartext access for non-human identities and automation
• Protect sensitive values used by BI, AI, RAG, notebooks, agents, and downstream systems
• Maintain protection when data is copied, exported, embedded, indexed, logged, replicated, or consumed downstream
• Apply field- and record-level cleartext controls across multiple platforms

The layered model is simple:

• Use IAM and IGA to govern identity and access to systems.
• Use Ubiq to govern exposure of sensitive values after access is granted.

How Ubiq Complements IAM and IGA

Ubiq complements IAM and IGA by applying runtime protection and cleartext authorization to sensitive values.

IAM and IGA help organizations manage identity, authentication, access rights, entitlements, approvals, reviews, and access governance.

Ubiq helps protect the sensitive data itself.

With Ubiq, selected sensitive fields can remain encrypted, tokenized, masked, or otherwise protected by default. Cleartext access is granted only when the requesting identity or workflow is authorized by policy at runtime.

This allows organizations to:

• Use identity context from IAM and IGA in runtime data protection decisions
• Protect sensitive values across applications, databases, warehouses, APIs, and analytics workflows
• Control cleartext access for users, applications, service accounts, pipelines, and AI systems
• Reduce exposure in BI and reporting workflows
• Protect sensitive data used by AI, RAG, notebook, model, and agent workflows
• Preserve protection when data is copied, exported, embedded, indexed, logged, replicated, or consumed downstream
• Maintain separation between system access and sensitive value authorization

In this model:

• IAM and IGA govern who can access systems.
• Ubiq governs which identities and workflows can access selected sensitive values in cleartext.

Together, they provide a stronger security architecture than either approach provides alone.

Internal Evaluation Questions

When evaluating IAM, IGA, and Ubiq together, teams should ask:

• Which systems can this identity access?
• Which sensitive fields and records can this identity see after access is granted?
• Which users, applications, service accounts, APIs, pipelines, BI tools, and AI workflows can access sensitive values today?
• Which workflows receive sensitive data in cleartext?
• Are system entitlements being treated as equivalent to sensitive value authorization?
• Are access reviews validating system access, data access, or both?
• What happens when sensitive data is queried, exported, copied, logged, joined, materialized, embedded, indexed, or replicated?
• Do BI tools, dashboards, extracts, and reports expose sensitive values?
• Do AI, RAG, notebook, MCP, vector store, model training, model inference, or agent workflows access sensitive values?
• Should service accounts, APIs, pipelines, or automation workflows receive cleartext, or only protected values?
• Which control determines whether a specific identity or workflow can see sensitive values in cleartext?
• How do we connect identity governance to runtime sensitive data enforcement?

Summary

IAM and IGA provide foundational controls for identity security and access governance. They help organizations authenticate identities, authorize system access, manage entitlements, provision and deprovision accounts, run access reviews, and support least-privilege access programs.

Ubiq addresses a different layer: runtime sensitive data protection.

By protecting selected sensitive values directly and governing cleartext access through identity-aware policy, Ubiq helps organizations reduce exposure across users, applications, service accounts, APIs, pipelines, databases, warehouses, BI tools, AI workflows, exports, logs, and downstream systems.

IAM and IGA govern access to systems.

Ubiq controls exposure of sensitive values after access is granted.

The strongest architecture uses both.