identity security

We’ve talked a lot about putting identity at the center of your security strategy – and for good reason. In a world of disappearing perimeters and exploding numbers of digital interactions, knowing who is accessing what is paramount. But let’s pause for a moment and ask a critical, almost philosophical question: if our identity systems are the gatekeepers, who’s watching the watchers themselves?

It’s a question that has echoed through history, from Plato to Roman satirists, and it’s incredibly relevant to today’s cybersecurity landscape. Your identity infrastructure – the complex web of directories, authentication systems, privileged access management tools, and all the policies holding them together – is the very foundation of your security. If this foundation has cracks, the entire house is at risk. This is precisely why establishing an Identity Security Posture Management (ISPM) strategy isn’t just a good idea; it’s essential.

Think about it. We’re rightly concerned with verifying every user, every device, every application. We’re moving towards a more secure, passwordless future with things like passkeys, and championing an identity-first approach to security. But what if the systems managing these identities are misconfigured, over-privileged, or riddled with dormant accounts? What if the “watchers” themselves are vulnerable?

The Dual Challenge: Human and Non-Human Identities

The complexity multiplies when you consider the sheer diversity of identities we’re now managing. It’s not just about Bob from accounting or Sarah from sales anymore.

• Human Identities: These are your employees, contractors, partners, and customers. The risks here are well-understood, ranging from weak or stolen credentials to insider threats and social engineering. Ensuring proper lifecycle management, least privilege access, and robust authentication for humans is a constant battle.
• Non-Human Identities: This is where things get really interesting, and often, much more alarming. We’re talking about service accounts, API keys, machine identities, application credentials, and identities for IoT devices and RPA bots. These non-human identities often outnumber human ones by a significant margin. They typically have broad, often excessive, permissions and are frequently overlooked or poorly managed. A compromised machine identity can be a golden ticket for an attacker, allowing them to move laterally, access sensitive data, and deploy malware, often completely undetected because, well, who’s closely watching the machines’ credentials?

If the systems governing these human and non-human identities are not meticulously secured, monitored, and managed, they become prime targets. Attackers are smart; they know that compromising the identity infrastructure itself provides the ultimate skeleton key to your kingdom.

Why Your Current Approach Might Not Be Enough

Many organizations have invested heavily in identity and access management (IAM) solutions, and that’s great. But IAM tools are primarily focused on enabling access and enforcing policies. ISPM, on the other hand, is about continuously assessing the security posture of your entire identity fabric. It’s about proactively identifying and remediating the hidden risks, misconfigurations, and vulnerabilities within your identity systems themselves.

Without a dedicated ISPM strategy, you’re likely flying blind to critical issues like:

• Privilege Creep: Permissions that accumulate over time, far exceeding what’s necessary.
• Dormant Accounts: Forgotten accounts that are ripe for takeover.
• Misconfigured Policies: Settings that inadvertently create security gaps.
• Over-Privileged Service Accounts: Non-human identities with excessive access rights.
• Weak Authentication for Infrastructure Components: The identity systems themselves not being properly secured.
• Lack of Visibility: Not knowing the full extent of all identity types and their entitlements.

Enter Identity Security Posture Management (ISPM)

ISPM provides the “watcher for your watchers.” It offers a dedicated layer of security focused on the integrity and resilience of your identity infrastructure. A robust ISPM strategy typically involves:

1. Comprehensive Discovery: Continuously identifying all human and non-human identities and their entitlements across your entire hybrid and multi-cloud environment.
2. Risk Assessment & Prioritization: Analyzing identities and configurations for vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and risky permissions, then prioritizing them based on potential impact.
3. Automated Detection: Using analytics and machine learning to detect anomalies, policy violations, and emerging threats within the identity infrastructure.
4. Guided Remediation: Providing clear, actionable steps to fix identified issues, often with automation capabilities.
5. Continuous Monitoring & Governance: Ensuring that your identity security posture remains strong over time through ongoing monitoring, reporting, and adherence to defined governance policies.

It’s Time to Secure the Foundation

Just like we wouldn’t build a fortress on shaky ground, we can’t afford to have an identity-first security strategy reliant on an insecure identity infrastructure. The principle of “quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” isn’t about fostering distrust; it’s about implementing robust checks and balances.

By adopting an ISPM strategy, you’re not just adding another layer of security; you’re reinforcing the very core of your defenses. You’re ensuring that the systems responsible for authenticating and authorizing every access request are themselves secure, resilient, and trustworthy.

So, as you continue your journey towards a stronger, identity-centric security model, take a moment to consider who, or rather what, is watching your watchers. The answer should be a comprehensive Identity Security Posture Management strategy.

Technology is changing at a rapid pace, with the adoption of cloud, digital transformation and a hybrid work environment, users are accessing data and resources from anywhere at anytime and expect a seamless access experience while ensuring their data is protected against cyberthreats. The traditional perimeter based network security can no longer work to secure access to resources in the public and private cloud environments. Identity has become the new security perimeter.

The concept of identity-based threats has become increasingly prevalent in today’s digital era, encompassing a range of malicious activities designed to compromise personal or organizational information. Among the most common manifestations of these identity-based threats are phishing, social engineering, and credential theft. Phishing, for instance, involves deceiving individuals into revealing sensitive data, typically through emails or SMS that appear to come from trustworthy sources. Social engineering exploits psychological manipulation and analyzing publicly available information on social networks and other public sites to gain unauthorized access, while credential theft involves stealing login details either through an attack or by purchasing them on the dark web from a previous breach.

In fact, bad actors have also shifted focus to utilizing identity as the initial attack vector in majority of breaches. Phishing and credential compromise rate as the top 2 initial attack vectors according to a recent Cost of a Data Breach Report by IBM and Ponemon.

While organizations have shifted to implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA) and Passwordless authentication, attackers have also evolved to develop ways to bypass MFA and launch account take over (ATO) attacks such as MFA prompt bombing, SIM swapping, Adversary in the Middle, etc. In addition the evolution of gen AI and a dark web marketplace offering services such as phishing-as-a-service has made it easier for attackers to launch targeted attacks against organizations of all sizes.

Building a Resilient Identity Security Framework

Creating a resilient identity security framework is essential for organizations to safeguard their data and resources against the ever-evolving identity threats landscape. Developing comprehensive security policies to secure identities forms the foundation of such a framework. These policies should address various facets of identity security, from user authentication protocols to access control measures across users by tying in contextual access information across non-human entities such as workloads, SaaS applications, virtual machines, APIs, containers, chatbots and more. Ensuring that these policies are deeply embedded within the organization’s operational procedures is critical for their efficacy.

Continuous security audits to understand the organization’s identity security posture and risk play a pivotal role in identifying potential vulnerabilities and gaps that could be exploited by malicious actors. By proactively reviewing and updating security measures, organizations can actively mitigate risks associated with identity threats.

Another crucial element in building a resilient identity security framework is the integration of continuous monitoring systems in order to understand the overall risk posture as it changes over time. These systems should provide real-time visibility into user activities, their risk profile based on how their user profile has been configured, their role and access to various resources as well as understanding how to prioritize high risk users based on potential attack paths that can lead to a breach. Leveraging advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning can substantially improve the accuracy and efficiency of these monitoring efforts.

By staying informed and actively monitoring their identity security risk posture, and proactively responding to issues by remediating user identity configuration issues such as ineffective MFA, least privilege access violations, organizations can adapt their security strategies to counter new and sophisticated attack vectors effectively.