Axiomatics turns 19! A Q&A on our authorization journey, AI, and more!

Axiomatics turns 19 years old! To celebrate, we did a Q&A with the leadership team focusing on our authorization journey, AI, Zero Trust, etc

Axiomatics   ·   Tuesday, August 26th, 2025   ·   Reading Time: 6 minutes

A lot has changed in the cybersecurity space in the past two decades. But, one thing that’s stayed the same is the existence of Axiomatics. This year, Axiomatics turns 19 years old! To celebrate, I sat down with a few members of our leadership team — Babak Sadighi (CEO), Jim Barkdoll (Vice President of U.S Sales), David Brossard (CTO), and Matt Luckett (Vice President of Customer Relations) — to get their insights on how this milestone was impacted by the evolution of authorization, the creation of Abbreviated Language for Authorization (ALFA), Zero Trust, the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI), and more!

How has the market changed and adapted throughout the years since Axiomatics’ very first year?

David: The market has broadened. In the early days of access control, there was a huge focus on manufacturing and finance; export control on the one hand and fraud prevention on the other. We now know access control applies in many more scenarios. Moreover, access control is no longer just about security. It’s also about business processes and developer efficiency. Companies don’t simply use Axiomatics products to secure their applications, but rather, to save on development costs. That’s a shift in mindset from a decade ago.

Babak: The level of maturity in the market is also substantially higher now than when we started. Many organizations have either started to implement policy-based authorization or they are planning to do that in the next couple years.

How has Axiomatics as an enterprise evolved alongside the market?

David: In the early days, even before my time, the company was very Java-biased, Java-focused. Most companies had a technological bias. Some built on the .NET platform, others on the Java (Sun, Oracle, IBM) platform. There was little overlap. That has of course changed, and Axiomatics has adapted accordingly. In 2010, we shipped on top of Glassfish and talked about securing SOAP web services. Today, we are container-based (Docker for instance) and we secure a much broader range of systems.

Babak: Over the years, we have shifted from a start-up focused on research to a vendor focused on enterprise software. This journey came with an evolution in our interactions with larger enterprises and how our solutions are delivered.

What things have stayed the same in regards to how we run business?

Jim: Axiomatics knows and understands what it takes to serve the enterprise. From the initial interaction before they become a customer, to the care and patience in working with their systems during onboarding and purchasing, but especially in the customer success in the installation and customer journey. Our teams know that authorization and the role it plays in Zero Trust is an integral component to enterprise security, and we carry the experience from years of learned success to nurture our client relationships.

Babak: Our focus on the field of authorization has remained at the forefront of what we do. We have continued to innovate and build authorization solutions for large enterprises with complex authorization requirements.

What are some of the biggest innovations or pivots Axiomatics has made over the past 19 years?

David: We have drastically modernized the underlying standard we use, eXtensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML), to be more developer-friendly. Goodbye angle brackets (sorry XML lovers), hello JSON and YAML. We also created ALFA, the Abbreviated Language for Authorization that developers can use to write policies in an intuitive way. This was visionary back then, predating “everything-as-code” by a few years.

Axiomatics also created and patented partial evaluation on top of XACML policies. Lastly, in the past 24 months, we’ve been spearheading innovation at the OpenID Foundation through the AuthZEN Working Group.

Babak: I would like to add our Contextual Access Query (CAQ)solution to the list David mentions above. This unique solution enables us to develop advanced data filtering solutions as well as authorization analysis tools.

What does Axiomatics’ 19-year track record mean for customers today?

Matt: Trust is the first word that comes to mind. Our customers, like ourselves, have seen the evolution of this space, and seen other companies come and go over the past 19 years. For our customers, knowing they have a best-in-breed technology that supports all their use cases, and that Axiomatics will be with them for years to come, gives them confidence that their authorization needs will be handled.

David: For me, the first word that comes to mind is experience. Customers know they can depend on us. Because of our 19 years in the industry, customers know we have the knowledge to guide them through their most complex use cases. Secondly, I agree with Matt that trust is at the top of mind as well. Most of our customers are still with us today and that’s something that I know the whole Axiomatics team really values.

Can you share a story of how a long-term customer relationship has grown and evolved over time?

Matt: I’ve had the privilege of seeing some great success stories with our customers. In some cases, it’s the ability to reduce rolesfrom more than 65,000 to about 100 roles that pull attributes from a central data source. In other cases, it’s the resiliency of Axiomatics compared to other services that allows them to confidently ensure access is granted without servers going down. In additional scenarios, it’s the ability to integrate Axiomatics across hundreds of applications, ensuring common policies, reduced time to value, and reduced maintenance time of their applications. What I’ve really enjoyed though personally, is that with the trust we’ve built with our customers, we are able to work together to understand their security roadmap and build towards their goals collaboratively.

David: For me, it’s those customers that have started the journey with a single use case in mind, and later realized the strength of our platform and how much more they’re able to achieve. One of our customers started with a handful of applications a decade or so ago and now secure 600+ applications. That’s success. Because I care about the personal side of every business relationship, this is also where I strive to take care of my counterparts, listen to their needs, and sometimes even personal stories, as we mutually grow together.

What are you most excited about for the future of Axiomatics as we approach 20 years?

Matt: Seeing the rapid change of technology over the last few years because of the evolution of AI has me excited for what comes next. AI is currently like the wild west. Everyone has access to it, but there is very little control over what information goes into the Large Language Model (LLM), and even less control on the information users can pull out of it. This opens the door to new technical challenges that customers will face and authorization will play a huge role in solving.

David: Companies realize the increasing need for authorization all the while many have achieved maturity in authentication. This will lead to new use cases. Add to the mix a dollop of AI, Model Context Protocol (MCP), and agents, and we have a whole slew of new requirements we need to tackle. The research in this space will shape the future of the company.

Babak: Both Zero Trust and security for AI solutions will be the areas that enterprises will invest in, and Axiomatics has a unique and strong position to bring interesting and innovative solutions in these two areas.

Jim: The innovation ahead that policy plays in Zero Trust and the role the Axiomatics platform sets the foundation for that. Our vision for integrated enterprise security and the ability to audit that easily is already at hand, but the ability to do that even more seamlessly is exciting.

The journey continues

While Axiomatics has seen many new landscapes over the past 19 years, one thing remains at the forefront of what we do: our customers. As we celebrate this milestone, we want to take you with us and express gratitude for those that have stayed with us along the way. You make what we do possible.

We invite you to join us for the journey that lies ahead as Zero Trust, AI, and authorization continues to evolve.

In the meantime, check out some of these resources that highlight our journey and the future to come:

• State of Authorization: Playbook Edition (newly updated!)
• Axiomatics: Leading the charge in authorization innovation
• Agentic AI and NHIs: Why authorization is a must-have – Axiomatics