One of the key benefits of identity management is providing secure access for systems and directories. When authentication is misused, it makes the system vulnerable to unauthorized updates. Some reasons for vulnerability may be because of weak passwords, too-many passwords, failure to authenticate users, credential proliferation and no audit logs to trace back transactions.

 
When using identity access management systems, these vulnerabilities are prevented and they can be addressed in a different way. For example, password synchronization systems enforce a strong password policy with limits on length, frequency of change, history and password complexity whenever there is a change in password. Self-service and assisted password reset systems can be configured to implement a robust process for authenticating users who forgot or locked out their password. Thus, vulnerabilities may be eradicated with password synchronization and multi factor authentication to implement a system with strong defense baseline.