Getting Off the Wrong Train: Why Secure Foundations Matter
We are currently onboarding all our applications into a identity governance administration tool. And by all, I mean without compromise. If an application cannot be onboarded, we cut it from our landscape.
When you go through hundreds of applications like this, patterns become painfully clear. Some companies truly own access control. They provide robust models, proper breakglass accounts, and seamless SSO that works as it should. Others, however, reveal cracks at every turn: bugs in the IAM layer, missing fundamentals, and SSO hidden behind a premium paywall.
The topic often comes up in conversations with my CTO. Recently I said, “access control must be bug free.” His response was, “In theory, yes… but in practice it’s different.” And he’s right, most software cannot realistically be bug free. But here’s the thing: access control is the one place where we cannot compromise. If the rules of who gets in, who stays out, and who has privileged access are flawed, everything else you build is exposed.
A Japanese proverb says: “If you get on the wrong train, get off at the next station – the longer you stay, the more expensive the return trip will be.”
With supply chain attacks, agentic attacks, and new forms of exploitation on the rise, this wisdom has never been more urgent. If your product begins with weak or incomplete access control, every new feature inherits that fragility. Each decision compounds the original mistake until it becomes systemic debt: expensive, risky, and almost impossible to unwind.
We have all seen organizations patch their IAM layers with quick fixes, long after the train has left the station. By the time they attempt to fix it, they face brittle code, inconsistent policies, and escalating risks that affect millions of users.
That is why at Simptel we made a different choice with TF Platform. Six years ago we set out to solve complex business problems within the telco tech. Along the way we discovered a truth: access control is never sexy, always complex, yet absolutely fundamental.
So we decided to tame this beast. Not just for ourselves, but for the industry at large. And we will keep doing so for the years to come.
Access control is not a feature. It is the foundation of trust, scalability, and resilience. If you are on the wrong train, step off now, before the price of turning back becomes too high.
