Compare · IAM
Skipr and identity and access management
Identity and access management answers who someone is and which systems they may enter. It was built for people and sessions. Governed execution asks a narrower question at a later moment: may this action, against this resource, with this data, proceed now?
What IAM does well
- Authentication, single sign-on and federation
- Lifecycle management for users, groups and entitlements
- Coarse-grained access to applications and resources
- Attestation and recertification of entitlements
Where it stops
- Grants are session-scoped; actions inside the session are not individually arbitrated
- Non-human principals are typically modelled as service accounts with static rights
- Context at the moment of the action is not part of the grant
- Evidence covers access events, not the actions taken with that access
What changes with autonomous execution
- Autonomous agents take many actions per grant, across systems
- The relevant scope is per call, not per login
- Attribution needs to reach the agent that decided, not the account it used
How Skipr complements it
- Skipr consumes the organization's existing identity sources rather than replacing them
- SecureConnect extends verified identity to devices, workloads and applications
- AgentConnect adds first-class agent identity with its own scope and lifetime
- The runtime decision is made per action, on top of the identity IAM establishes
Side by side
| Dimension | IAM | Skipr |
|---|---|---|
| Question answered | Who are you and what may you reach? | May this action execute now? |
| Granularity | Session and entitlement | Individual action |
| Non-human principals | Service accounts | Agents, workloads and devices as principals |
| Evidence | Access events | Decision, scope and executed action |
Questions
- Does Skipr replace my identity provider?
- No. It integrates with it. The identity provider remains the source of truth for who a principal is.
- Is this just fine-grained authorization?
- Authorization is one stage of seven. The runtime also resolves context, binds scope to execution and produces the evidence.
- What about non-human identities in IAM?
- Most IAM deployments model them as static service accounts. Skipr treats agents and workloads as principals with runtime-scoped grants.
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Other comparisons
- AI governance and runtime governanceAI governance decides and documents what should be allowed. Runtime governance enforces it in the path of the action and proves the outcome. Both are needed.
- Skipr and privileged access managementPAM controls privileged sessions and credentials for administrators. Skipr governs every action — human, agent, application or machine — at runtime.
- Skipr and zero trust network accessZTNA decides whether a principal may connect to a resource. Skipr decides whether the action taken over that connection may execute, and proves it.