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The Executive Voice
The hybrid, borderless workplace has redefined how India works. Across BFSI head offices, IT campuses, Global Capability Centres (GCCs) and manufacturing facilities, employees move seamlessly between physical offices, remote workstations and cloud-based applications. India’s GCC sector alone employs more than 2.36 million professionals across 2,117 centres, with workforce footprints stretching from Bengaluru and Hyderabad to Tier-2 cities such as Coimbatore, Indore and Visakhapatnam. This mobility empowers productivity, but it demands secure, robust and frictionless credentialing across every touchpoint.
Today’s Indian workforce expects instant, adaptive authentication that blends biometrics, tokens and passwords into a single, trusted credential. Employers prioritise resilience against escalating threats such as phishing and AI-driven attacks , which CERT-In has flagged among the fastest-growing incident categories in India, while building unified technology platforms that integrate physical and digital systems.
This physical/digital identity convergence is gaining momentum globally, and is sharply visible in India. According to the HID 2026 State of Security and Identity Report, a global survey of more than 1,500 end users and industry partners, 75% of organisations have either deployed or are evaluating integrated identity solutions. The signal is even stronger in Asia-Pacific, where 84% of respondents said they had deployed (32%) or were evaluating (52%) convergence technology.
Convergence unifies these disparate systems into a single, resilient framework, eliminating silos and slashing vulnerabilities at their source. It positions Indian organisations to thrive securely in an era of unrelenting cyber evolution while meeting the expectations of the modern workforce.
In most organisations, physical and network security operate separately, typically backed by different vendors and credentials. An employee might tap a badge at the lobby turnstile, enter a password for their workstation and a soft OTP for the corporate VPN, and use yet another method to access cloud apps. These disconnected systems multiply vulnerabilities, complicate audits and increase the cost and effort of managing identity across the enterprise. This problem is compounded for Indian organisations operating under multiple regulators, from RBI cyber-resilience norms for BFSI to SEBI’s Cybersecurity and Cyber Resilience Framework (CSCRF) for market intermediaries, alongside the Digital Personal Data Protection Act and DPDP Rules 2025.
For identity and access management (IAM) leaders, the business case increasingly comes down to governance, evidence and operations. Governance applies consistent policies and assurance levels across every access point; evidence provides auditable proof of who had access and why , a requirement that takes on a sharper edge under the DPDP regime; and operations reduces manual work while making identity management more scalable across the employee lifecycle.
Converged credentials that unify physical badges, passwords and digital tokens into a single layer reduce points of failure from disparate silos. This holistic approach enables centralised policy enforcement, real-time threat detection across domains and streamlined audits that can bolster resilience against AI-driven attacks.
As identity management takes on increased importance, organisations are exploring the merger of physical and digital through converged technologies, according to the HID report.
Organisations are prioritising seamless integration to simplify security operations, with 73% of survey respondents ranking it as the leading trend. This marks a pivotal shift toward holistic protection, as firms consolidate fragmented systems into unified platforms.
Managing multiple disparate systems is the main pain point, cited by 52% of respondents, prompting 60% to boost spending on streamlined solutions. Enterprises seek fewer vendors and less complexity, moving toward single platforms that handle employee credentials, visitor access, MFA and physical identity and access management (PIAM) in one system. Equally important, these platforms must support clear governance and consistent assurance levels across the joiner/mover/leaver journey , a critical concern in India’s high-velocity IT services, BPM and GCC environments, where lateral movement and attrition keep the joiner/mover/leaver process under constant strain. Persistent challenges such as limited budgets (41%), user friction (42%), compliance pressures (29%) and cloud integration snags (27%) loom large, yet consolidation promises clear ROI through lower overhead, fortified security and more seamless experiences.
Physical-digital identity convergence accelerates this trend, with 75% of organisations either deploying unified solutions (29%) or evaluating them (46%). A single credential unlocking buildings, networks and cloud apps reduces complexity while amplifying resilience. Indian enterprises are no longer debating the adoption of converged solutions; the conversation has shifted to how best to execute them to suit organisational needs.
Converged credentials provide the unified solution enterprises need, enabling a single authenticator for both physical and logical access. By leveraging phishing-resistant FIDO2 and PKI standards, this approach directly counters credential phishing and AI threats by replacing isolated credentials with a hardened, centralised layer. This is particularly relevant in India, where CERT-In handled more than 2.94 million cyber incidents in 2025, and where phishing and credential compromise consistently rank among the leading attack vectors.
Core advantages include unified visibility across all access points to eliminate blind spots; simplified compliance through streamlined auditing within a single system; and efficient provisioning and revocation that spans environments instantly.
This convergence extends beyond convenience to operational efficiency. New hires at an Indian GCC or BFSI campus gain immediate access to facilities, devices and applications upon onboarding, while offboarding revokes privileges instantly enterprise-wide. Because zero-trust principles are embedded, converged credentials enforce continuous verification regardless of location or device , whether the employee is at a Mumbai headquarters, a Pune development centre or working remotely from a Tier-2 town.
Regarding technology that connects physical and digital identities, 84% of APAC respondents said they either had deployed (32%) or were evaluating (52%) convergence technology.
When evaluating credential solutions, Indian IAM leaders should look for those that streamline and unify the credential lifecycle across physical and logical access. They should deliver high assurance through stronger credentials, simplified operations, a consistent user experience and audit and compliance evidence aligned to DPDP, RBI, SEBI CSCRF and ISO 27001 expectations.
The most effective solutions will also offer multiple form factors to fit the way Indian organisations and their employees actually work, including:
Together, these options enable Indian organisations to deploy the appropriate credentials for each user and use case while maintaining a unified identity and access framework across the enterprise.
As hybrid work expands across India and cyber threats grow more sophisticated, with Indian organisations now facing an estimated 2,000+ attacks per week, organisations can no longer afford to manage physical and logical access as separate systems. Converged credentials address this challenge by enabling a single, phishing-resistant credential to secure buildings, workstations and cloud applications. This approach reduces complexity, closes security gaps, simplifies compliance with India’s evolving regulatory regime and improves the user experience.
By consolidating identity into one secure framework, Indian organisations can strengthen security, streamline operations and provide employees with seamless access wherever, and however, they work.
