Start with Identity launches free vendor-neutral IAM reference

Start with Identity went live July 28, 2026 as a free, non-commercial identity and access management reference with published scoring, dated vendor reviews, and no paywall or sponsorship. The launch aims to give engineers a citable alternative to vendor marketing at a time when identity threats, passkeys, machine identities, and competing breach statistics are reshaping the field.

Why it matters: - Identity and access management teams are making architecture decisions in a fast-changing market where vendor claims, breach data, and standards are moving at the same time. - Start with Identity is trying to become a neutral source engineers can cite for protocol choices, vendor comparisons, and national identity scheme research. - The launch matters because the site publishes its scoring methodology in full and invites public challenge, instead of asking readers to trust a black-box ranking.

What happened: - Start with Identity launched July 28, 2026 as an independent, practitioner-led technical reference for identity and access management. - The site is free to read, free to cite, has no sponsorship, and accepts no paid placement. - Deepak Gupta founded the project after previously founding LoginRadius and scaling its CIAM platform from first commit to more than one billion managed user identities while serving as CTO and CISO. - The launch is described as an initial release, with volunteers being recruited across seven roles.

The details: - The site includes 12 protocol deep dives on OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, SAML, WebAuthn, FAPI, SCIM, and verifiable credentials. - It offers code-forward developer recipes for adding login, validating JWTs, protecting APIs, wiring SCIM provisioning, and shipping passkeys. - The reference includes 84 practitioner guides on migration without downtime, multi-tenant B2B architecture, enterprise readiness for SSO and audit logs, and CIAM pricing models. - A live standards tracker and sourced research dataset attach an attribution and date to every figure. - The site also includes breach teardowns that trace incidents back to the identity control that failed. - A 123-term glossary and a curated library of 87 external resources are part of the corpus, including RFCs, NIST 800-63, OWASP guidance, academic research, and industry reports. - The database covers 293 vendor profiles across 17 categories, including workforce IAM, CIAM, PAM, IGA, CIEM, ITDR, machine identity, secrets, PKI, authorization, ZTNA, decentralized identity, and agentic AI identity. - Each vendor profile is scored against a published capability matrix and is dated and signed. - The reference also tracks 86 national digital identity schemes across 51 countries, from Aadhaar to Login.gov, with the standards each uses, how citizens authenticate, and privacy notes. - It maps 39 identity and data-protection regulations across 20 countries to authentication, consent, governance, verification, and data residency impacts. - The project includes 14 vertical breakdowns covering identity constraints in financial services, healthcare, government, gaming, telecom, and other sectors. - The scoring methodology is published at the methodology page and is open to challenge. - Every evaluation is dated and signed, and every profile shows an author, date, and confidence level. - Opinions are labeled as opinions, facts carry citations, and disclosures appear on pages that need them. - The site does not use an email wall or registration wall. - The corpus is structured to be machine-readable and citable for AI assistants and answer engines.

Between the lines: - The launch is a direct response to a trust problem in the IAM market, where buyers often rely on whitepapers written to support sales. - Gupta argues that the field has become crowded with sponsored or acquired research voices, which leaves engineers with fewer independent references. - The timing also reflects a broader identity reset: Verizon's 2026 DBIR says software vulnerability exploitation has overtaken stolen credentials as the top initial access vector, while other 2026 reports still show credential abuse and machine identities dominating large parts of the threat landscape. - The site is positioning itself as a counterweight to vendor-driven benchmarks by exposing the scoring matrix instead of only the score. - The contribution model is designed to turn corrections and challenges into public, citable work for practitioners.

What's next: - Start with Identity is recruiting contributors across seven roles, with most roles expected to take one to four hours a week. - Applications are open at startwithidentity.com/community. - Gupta said the project is still missing a lot by design, leaving room for community contributions. - The project says every contribution will ship with the contributor's name on it. - Start with Identity is live at startwithidentity.com with no paywall, no registration, and no email wall.

The bottom line: - Start with Identity is betting that IAM buyers and builders want a public, dated, vendor-neutral reference more than another polished vendor ranking.