ManageEngine has been positioned as a Representative Vendor in the 2025 Gartner® Market Guide for Identity Governance and Administration

We have been named a Representative Vendor for three consecutive years in the Gartner Market Guide for Identity Governance and Administration.

While IGA remains a cornerstone of enterprise security, the threat landscape has evolved. Attackers no longer rely solely on exploiting governance gaps; they target weak authentication, misconfigured systems, dormant accounts, and excessive entitlements to move laterally and escalate privileges. This is why enterprises need more than governance alone. ManageEngine AD360 integrates IGA with access management, adaptive authentication, and continuous risk monitoring, ensuring controls remain effective against modern attack paths.

Below, we break down how AD360 closes governance gaps and seals off potential entry points attackers might use.

When an intrusion occurs

A breach often begins with a compromised password. If additional controls are absent, attackers can use those credentials to gain a foothold in critical systems. With AD360’s adaptive MFA and over 20 supported authentication methods, including phishing-resistant FIDO2 passkeys for Windows, macOS, and Linux logins, such attempts are contained at the first point of access.

Moving laterally through accounts

If access is gained, attackers seek higher privileges, exploiting group memberships and delegation chains in Active Directory (AD).

AD360's Risk Exposure Management provides a visual map of these potential attack paths. It highlights privilege creep, nested permissions, and exposure links, giving administrators a clear picture of how an attacker could escalate access. Remediation guidance allows security teams to close these pathways before exploitation occurs.

Exploiting local machines

Endpoints often provide attackers with a pivot point. Local accounts on Windows machines can be used to bypass domain controls or move quietly across systems.

AD360 extends MFA to local Windows users, securing logins, unlocks, UAC prompts, and RDP server connections for both stand-alone and domain-joined machines. Even if local credentials are compromised, multi-factor verification prevents their misuse.

Unnecessary and dormant access

Excessive entitlements and forgotten accounts both widen the attack surface. Over time, users may accumulate more privileges than their roles require, and accounts belonging to former employees or contractors often remain active long after they should have been disabled. Both scenarios create easy opportunities for attackers once an account is compromised.

AD360 addresses these risks with its ML-based access recommendations that analyze attributes such as the department, role, and manager to suggest least privilege group memberships during provisioning. The same intelligence supports access certification campaigns, ensuring entitlements are retained only when there is a clear business justification. The certification campaigns prompt periodic reviews of dormant or orphaned accounts, enabling approvers to revoke or disable them quickly. Together, these features help ensure that users maintain only the access they need and that unused accounts are promptly removed from circulation.

Expanding the attack surface

Modern enterprises span on-premises AD, hybrid deployments, and cloud directories such as Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud. Misconfigurations across these layers frequently expand the attack surface.

AD360's Attack Surface Analyzer detects over 25 common attack techniques in on-premises environments while also surfacing risky configurations across cloud directories. Dashboards and reports enable IT teams to identify exposures early and remediate them before adversaries exploit them.

Assessing who’s the most at risk

Not all accounts carry the same weight. Some identities, such as domain administrators or research faculty, are high-value targets and require greater oversight.

AD360’s Identity Risk Assessment scores and prioritizes accounts based on their activity and privileges, allowing IT and security teams to focus on identities that pose the highest exposure risk.

Closing the loop with governance

Governance is not just about entitlements; it is about maintaining oversight and compliance across the entire identity life cycle. With AD360, governance is extended through:

• Automated provisioning and deprovisioning to ensure access is immediately granted or revoked as users join or leave.

• Orchestration workflows that streamline approvals, reduce delays, and ensure policy consistency.

• Uniform policy enforcement for MFA and password requirements across environments.

• Built-in compliance reporting with predefined, audit-ready reports aligned with major regulatory standards, like the PCI DSS, HIPAA, the GDPR, and SOX.

An integrated defense

Without the right safeguards, an intrusion can escalate quickly from a single compromised password to privilege escalation, data exfiltration, or even ransomware deployment. With AD360, every stage of the attack chain is interrupted, whether through MFA enforcement, exposure mapping, access certifications, or continuous monitoring.

Want to see it in action? Schedule a one-on-one session with our product experts to explore how AD360 strengthens governance, streamlines identity operations, and embeds identity-first security across your enterprise.

Disclaimer:

Gartner, Market Guide for Identity Governance and Administration, Steve Wessels, Paul Mezzera, Brian Guthrie,  Rebecca Archambault, 2 October 2025

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