Modern organizations rely on a wide range of software systems to run daily operations. While identity and access management tools were originally designed to control users and directory services, much of today’s identity activity no longer sits inside those centralized platforms. Access decisions increasingly happen inside application code, application programming interfaces, service accounts, and custom login mechanisms. In many environments, credentials are stored within applications, permissions are enforced locally, and usage patterns evolve without formal review.
As a result, substantial portions of identity activity operate beyond the visibility of traditional identity, privileged access, and governance tools. This creates a persistent blind spot for security teams. The unseen portion of identity behavior represents risk that cannot be directly monitored or governed using configuration-based controls alone.
Conventional identity programs depend on predefined policies and system settings. These approaches work for centrally managed user accounts, but they do not adequately address custom-built software, legacy authentication processes, embedded secrets, non-human identities such as service accounts, or access routes that bypass identity providers. When these conditions exist, teams are often forced to reconstruct how access occurred after an incident or during an audit. This reactive process is labor-intensive and does not scale in complex enterprise environments.
Orchid Security positions its platform as a way to close this visibility gap through continuous identity observability across applications. The platform follows a four-part operational model designed to align with how security teams work in practice.
First, the platform identifies applications and examines how identity is implemented within them. Lightweight inspection techniques review authentication methods, authorization logic, and credential usage across both managed and unmanaged systems. This produces an inventory of applications, identity types, access flows, and embedded credentials, establishing a baseline of how identity functions in the environment.
Second, observed identity activity is evaluated in context. By linking identities, applications, and access paths, the platform highlights risks such as shared or hardcoded secrets, unused service accounts, privileged access that exists outside centralized controls, and differences between intended access design and real usage. This assessment is grounded in what is actually happening, not in what policies assume should happen.
Third, the platform supports remediation by integrating with existing identity and security processes. Teams can rank risks by potential impact, assign ownership to the appropriate control teams, and monitor progress as issues are addressed. The goal is coordination across current controls rather than replacement.
Finally, because discovery and analysis operate continuously, evidence for governance and compliance is available at all times. Current application inventories, records of identity usage, and documentation of control gaps and corrective actions are maintained on an ongoing basis. This shifts audits from periodic, manual exercises to a continuous readiness model.
As identity increasingly moves into application layers, sustained visibility into how access actually functions becomes essential for reducing unmanaged exposure, improving audit preparedness, and enabling decisions based on verified operational data rather than assumptions.
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