How Forrester’s predictions expose the limits of assumed trust and password policy
For years, most cybersecurity programs have been built on good intent: strong policies, layered controls, and the assumption that if the architecture looks right on paper, identity exposure — and risk more broadly — is being managed in practice.
According to Forrester’s 2026 Technology & Security Predictions, security leaders are entering what the firm describes as a race to trust and value — a shift where boards and executives expect measurable outcomes, not just well-designed security stacks. Budgets are tighter. AI investments are under a microscope. And CISOs are being asked a more direct question than ever before:
What risk did this actually reduce?
We’re seeing that question come up more often — and it’s forcing organizations to take a harder look at identity, because it’s one of the few areas where security value can either be clearly demonstrated or quietly assumed.
As financial and governance pressure increases, security leaders are being pushed to justify spend through tangible outcomes. Controls that rely on assumption rather than validation are becoming harder to defend — especially when budgets tighten or audits get more rigorous.
Identity security is a prime example.
Password policies, periodic audits, and even widespread MFA adoption are often treated as inherently protective. They’re important, and they’re still necessary. But they don’t answer a more fundamental question that comes up again and again:
Are the identities we’re protecting already exposed?
As organizations move from theoretical protection to defensible security, identity is often one of the first places where uncomfortable gaps surface.
Trust doesn’t erode all at once, and it rarely starts with a visible incident or headline breach.
More often, it erodes quietly:
None of these events violate password policy.
None of them trigger authentication alerts.
And yet all of them weaken the foundation that IAM, Zero Trust, and access controls rely on.
In 2026, trust doesn’t fail at the network or endpoint layer.
It fails earlier — at the identity layer.
Industry analysts are increasingly signaling that security teams will be judged less on the controls they deploy and more on the risk they can clearly demonstrate they’ve reduced.
That shift has direct implications for identity security.
Credential exposure is one of the few risks that is inherently measurable: how many credentials are exposed, where they originated, and how they map to real user accounts. This is why identity security has become a natural proving ground for value-based security programs — and why identifying and addressing credential risk early matters, as outlined in 10 Credential Risks Security Teams Can’t Ignore.
As organizations adopt more automation, AI-driven workflows, and interconnected systems, identity data increasingly feeds both operational and security decisions.
If those identities are already compromised, automation doesn’t reduce risk by default unless it’s built to remediate identity exposure.
Strong governance depends on trusted inputs. When identity integrity is compromised, every control layered on top inherits that weakness. This is why identity exposure can no longer be treated as a downstream issue or an edge case — and why strengthening identity security requires visibility beyond the organization.
Security architectures still matter. But architectural confidence alone is no longer enough to satisfy executives, auditors, or boards.
In 2026, trust is increasingly tied to outcomes:
For identity security, that means moving beyond “we have policies and controls” to “we have visibility into exposure and we address it before it’s abused.”
That distinction is becoming harder to ignore.
Password policy governs how credentials are created and managed — not whether they’ve been exposed.
A password can be fully compliant and still appear in breach data, be reused across compromised services, be harvested by malware, or exist in credential dumps long before an attacker ever logs in.
Without visibility into external credential exposure, identity risk remains assumed rather than measured. This challenge shows up most clearly in environments like Active Directory, which often function as a central identity exposure surface, as discussed in Enterprise Security Protection.
A consistent signal across 2026 security discussions is the need to intervene earlier — reducing exposure before incidents occur rather than reacting after damage is done.
For identity security, that shift happens before authentication:
Most identity-driven attacks don’t succeed because controls fail at login. They succeed because the credentials were already compromised well before anyone noticed.
In 2026, security leaders won’t be judged by how many tools they deploy or how comprehensive their policies look. They’ll be judged by whether they can show that risk has meaningfully decreased.
Identity — and specifically identity exposure tied to credentials — is one of the few areas where that proof is possible.
When organizations can demonstrate that they are continuously identifying and addressing exposed credentials before attackers use them, security stops being an abstract investment and becomes a defensible business safeguard.
And in the race to trust and value, that distinction matters.