Gartner IAM London 2025 recap with David Brossard and Babak Sidighi

A recap of the Gartner IAM London 2025 conference detailing conversations around IAM, Zero Trust, Generative AI, and more.

Axiomatics   ·   Thursday, April 10th, 2025   ·   Reading Time: 4 minutes

At the end of March, our team took a trip to London for the Gartner Identity and Access Management (IAM) Summit. This year’s event had engaging and enlightening conversations surrounding IAM, Zero Trust, Generative AI, and more.

I spoke with our Chief Technology Officer, David Brossard, and our Founder and Head of Strategy, Babak Sidighi, to get an understanding of the important conversations that happened at this year’s event.

What were the most prominent topics or discussions at this year’s event?

David: The theme, as you might recall, was “Identity amplified” and there were definitely many talks around that. This conference saw the true rise of non-human identities. In the opening keynote, Felix Gaehtgens talks about IAM constituencies of which “machines” are one.

It’s not surprising that he then calls out machine IAM, AI, and IAM standards as the key trends in this conference.

Let’s focus on the latter: IAM standards. Ever since its inception, Axiomatics has always been actively involved in standards. Back in the day, our co-founder Erik was the editor for XACML 3.0. Today I’m delighted to be one of the co-chairs of the OpenID AuthZEN Working Group. Gartner decided to support our standardization work and host two interoperability events on Monday (for Shared Signals) and Tuesday (for AuthZEN).

Back at the booth, many attendees asked about standards. There are 2 goals: avoid vendor lock-in and have the assurance that the design is high-quality.

Babak: This year I noticed that people were really engaging with quality authorization conversations when they would stop by our booth. More predominately, it was clear that the level of authorization maturity in the market has risen compared to last year. A lot more people already had a vague understanding of what authorization is and were willing to jump right into in-depth conversations which was really exciting.

What was the biggest surprise or hidden gem?

David: The surprise: I was delighted to see Felix mention the importance of standards during the keynote. I was happy to see the strong turnout at both OpenID events.

The hidden gem: Simon Moffatt of The Cyber Hut also had a session “Executive Story: IAM at 2035 – A Future Guide to Identity Centric Security”. He essentially guides the attendee through a map to avoid the complications (that arise from the sheer size of IT and its variety) and implement a secure, agile, and productive IAM framework.

Babak: The biggest surprise for me this year was the landscape of the conference. It’s always nice to see familiar faces that I don’t always get to see. It’s also intriguing to see who attends what events. It changes every year and depends on different locations which is what makes the Gartner IAM Summit so worthwhile.

Do you have a favorite quote that you heard? If so, what did you takeaway from it?

David: Homan “With AuthZEN, we have an opportunity to make a big difference.” At the beginning of the executive session on OpenID AuthZEN, Homan reveals why he’s so interested in the space.

Babak: I don’t have a specific quote in mind, but I loved hearing the conversations surrounding the progression of authorization, including past, present, and future. It’s been enlightening to witness the evolution of authorization.

What was the most impactful session?

David: I think the keynote started really strong with the three trends (AI, machine identity, and standards). Simon’s take on IAM 10 years from now is also a great session especially for CISOs looking to plan their work.

Rebecca Archambault’s session on balancing IAM with business perspectives is also extremely important: security should be an enabler, not a deterrent.

Babak: I found Homan Farahmand’s session “Technical Insights: Generative AI and IAM” intriguing. It’s always interesting to think about where generative AI will be even a year from now considering it’s still pretty early in its development. I may also be a bit biased, but my friend and fellow colleague David Brossard’s session with OpenID was also enlightening. It’s great to see the interest from the community in the standard.

Are there any trends that you see growing based on what you heard at the conference?

David: Passkeys have been a hot topic lately. I didn’t see as much here but they are definitely lurking. I think machine identities and access delegation as well as the impact of AI on IAM are trends we will see inexorably growing in 2025.

Babak: Generative AI has been a prominent topic for quite some time and it’s only getting deeper and deeper in conversation. I suspect that the topic of AI will not be going away any time soon and it’ll be interesting to see where it’ll be a year from now. Also, there was less conversation around Zero Trust compared to previous conferences which is an interesting shift to see in the market, though there are still components of Zero Trust that are being talked about.

Thank you to those who visited us at Gartner IAM!

It was a pleasure getting to meet new and familiar faces at our booth and sessions. Want to read more about what we talked about at the conference?

Here are three great resources for you to look into:

• State of Authorization: Playbook Edition (newly updated!)
• Introducing the era of authorization with AuthZEN
• Alleviating IAM technical debt through policy-driven authorization

Didn’t get the chance to talk with us at Gartner IAM? Request a demo and join the movement towards modernized, scalable runtime authorization and access control.