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.
