Most organisations don’t move to the cloud in one clean jump. They end up with a foot in both worlds: some systems on-premises, some in Azure or AWS, and a lot of plumbing connecting the two. That in-between state is where most of the real security risk lives, and it rarely gets the attention it deserves.

I’ve spent years working in and around hybrid environments, and the same gaps come up again and again. None of them are exotic or unusual. They are just the kind of thing that gets missed when everyone assumes someone else is handling it.

What is the identity seam in a hybrid setup?

When you connect your on-premises Active Directory to a cloud identity provider, you create a seam. Accounts sync, permissions flow, and suddenly a compromise in one environment can walk straight into the other.

The mistake I see most often is treating the two directories as if they’re one trusted system. They are not.…