Federation over fragmentation

Federation over fragmentation

One of the biggest challenges in identity and access management today is fragmentation. Employees, partners, and suppliers are forced to juggle separate accounts across dozens of systems, each with its own credentials and security standards. This decentralisation creates blind spots, weakens security, and expands the attack surface. It’s time to rethink how we manage identities across organisations.

Fragmentation and decentralisation of identities

Many organisations still adhere to legacy password policies such as forced complexity or regular rotation. These measures create more friction for users without addressing modern attack vectors. In practice, such policies may even weaken security by encouraging predictable patterns.

Without Single-Sign-On (SSO) between organisations, employees still juggle dozens of accounts between multiple suppliers. The result is password reuse, multiplying the risk. One single breach in one service can cascade into multiple compromised accounts.

Passwords are only part of the problem. The real risk is fragmentation: without federated SSO every supplier portal becomes its own silo filled with credentials. For the user, who does not want to have multiple accounts, this means taking shortcuts when it comes to securing the account. For the business it means a loss of centralised control and visibility. Who has access to what? Which accounts are still active after an employee leaves? Which supplier enforces strong authentication, and which doesn’t? In a decentralised model, each identity sprawl adds uncertainty and risk.

It’s time to leave passwords behind and move toward a unified, secure way of managing identities across organisations.

Solving fragmentation with federated SSO

Today, identity fragmentation is the norm. Employees, partners, and suppliers often manage separate accounts for every service they need to access. Each with its own login, password and security rules. This decentralisation makes it incredibly difficult to maintain an overview and enforce uniform policies, which increases the potential attack surface.

Federated Single-Sign-On (SSO) changes this picture. Unlike the more familiar SSO solutions that unify access across internal applications, federation allows organisations to extend trust across company boundaries. This means that an existing corporate account can be used to log in to services from external partners or suppliers, without creating yet another identity to manage.

With this approach, you’ll get clear security and usability benefits. Instead of spreading protection efforts across dozens of accounts and relying on other companies to take their security as seriously as you do, you’ll only need to secure one account. Another result is that users won’t need to juggle multiple credentials, which eliminates the risk of reused passwords across services.

Federation also strengthens governance: access reviews, incident response, and offboarding can all be handled centrally instead of chasing accounts across dozens of supplier systems. It means your organisation sets the security standard, rather than depending on the weakest practices of each supplier.

It’s both simpler for the user and stronger for the business. One login, everywhere, for the user. Easier to apply and enforce modern authentication measures like multi-factor authentication (MFA), passkeys and modern access control.

Make federation the default

But federated SSO is just the beginning; it’s a powerful step, but it’s not the end of the journey. For CISOs, the strategy is twofold: demand it from the outside and enable it from the inside. Put pressure on your suppliers and partners to support federation so that your employees can use their existing corporate accounts securely. At the same time, build federation into your own products and services so that partners and customers can benefit from the same simplification and security.

Be a part of the solution that breaks the cycle of fragmentation and decentralisation: by making federation the default, not the exception. It strengthens security, simplifies identity management, and sets a clear standard across your ecosystem.

If you’d like to learn more or explore how to apply these principles in your organisation, just send us a message!