In today’s digital environment, cyber security is not just a technical challenge – it’s a business imperative. At the heart of cybersecurity is identity security – the principle that the right people have the right access at the right time. As we move further into the digital world, protecting a business from modern threats is essential, which adds complexity by nature, making intellectual property management a must-have step towards an identity-first strategy.
The costs of breaching identity security can be high – data breaches, loss of customer trust and financial penalties are part of the leadership challenges in digital service management. For example, a simple case of an employee with excessive access rights can lead to data theft or destruction.
Identity security is not just about authentication and authorization but also visibility, governance and compliance. For example, the insurance industry increasingly sees identity protection as a cornerstone of effective cyber insurance, highlighting the need for strong identity and access management (IAM) practices to mitigate cyber risk. These benchmarks demonstrate the insurance industry’s commitment to promoting identity security as a cornerstone of cyber resilience, ensuring that organizations are well equipped to defend against and respond to cyber threats.
Identity security is the source of trust and security for all other security controls and policies. In this blog post, I will explain why security identity is important to your cybersecurity strategy, and how organizations can use identity as a key defense mechanism in the digital age.
Why self-awareness is the future of security
Identity is at the heart of cyber security, as it defines what constitutes good or bad, legal actions – and what is considered malicious behavior. Identity is the primary way organizations can determine and control who has access to which resources – and under what conditions – and ensure that those access rights are used appropriately. Identity is how organizations can monitor and evaluate their users, devices, applications, activities and behaviors and detect and react to anomalies or incidents.
With identity protection, you can know who is accessing data and systems, why they are accessing it and what they are doing with it. Without protecting identities, you can’t enforce security policies and compliance requirements, and your organization can’t hold users and partners accountable for their actions. Identity security is especially important in today’s context of digital transformation, cloud migration, remote work and mobile devices. These trends have increased the complexity and diversity of identity, the attack surface and the potential for identity vulnerability.
Your security strategy should cover multiple identities, such as employees, customers, partners, contractors, vendors, devices, applications and services, each with different levels of trust and access requirements. You must also deal with a variety of identity-related challenges, such as identity proliferation, orphan accounts, privileged access abuse, identity theft, password reuse, IT reputation and identity fraud. To address these challenges, you can take an identity security approach first, which means that identity security is not the ultimate solution or the ultimate solution but the creation of principles that guide the creation of your cybersecurity strategy. An identity-first security approach means implementing security controls and policies based on the identity context and risk profile of your users, devices and applications.
How to develop identity as an important defense tool
To find identity as an important security tool, you should use an identity protection framework that includes the following:
- Identity lifecycle management – involves creating, providing, renewing and revoking the ownership and access rights of all users, tools and applications based on their tasks and activities within the organization. It also ensures that identity and access rights are accurate, up-to-date and in compliance with organizational policies and regulations.
- Ownership and access management – involves verifying and validating the identity and access rights of all users, devices and applications based on their context, behavior and level of risk. Ownership and access management includes enforcing granular and dynamic access policies and rules, such as least privilege, multi-factor authentication (MFA) and conditional access.
- Proprietary and intellectual property protection – includes detecting and preventing threats and attacks targeting the identity and access rights of all users, devices and applications. Identity and intelligence protection also includes analyzing and correlating data and insights from the identity protection framework and using advanced analytics, machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) to identify and respond to anomalies, incidents and risks.
Benefits of prioritizing identity security
By using an identity protection framework, you can gain the following benefits:
- Improved security posture. Organizations can reduce the attack surface and the opportunity for compromise by ensuring that only the right people have access to the right resources under the right circumstances and exercise their access rights appropriately. Organizations can also improve their visibility and control of their data and systems by monitoring and evaluating the activities and behavior of their users, devices and applications – and detect and respond to any anomalies or incidents.
- Improved compliance and governance. Organizations can comply with security and privacy laws and applicable industry and regional standards, ensuring that their identity and access rights are accurate, up-to-date and consistent with their policies and requirements. Organizations can also demonstrate their accountability and transparency by disclosing reports and alerts to their internal and external stakeholders and providing proof and evidence of compliance with their security efforts.
- Increased productivity and efficiency. Organizations can streamline and automate their identity security processes and workflows, eliminating manual and error-prone tasks such as password resets, access requests and authorizations. Organizations can also improve their resources and costs by reducing the complexity of managing and maintaining multiple and diverse proprietary security solutions.
- Improved user experience and satisfaction. You can provide your users and partners with a seamless and secure access experience, allowing them to access the resources they need. When needed. from any device and location. Organizations can also empower their users and partners with self-service and delegated management capabilities, allowing them to manage their identities, access rights and request and approve access changes.
Identity security is the foundation for strengthening cyber security systems and is essential for managing related controls and policies. By prioritizing identity security in cyber security strategies, organizations can effectively determine and control who has access to which resources under what circumstances and ensure that these access rights are used appropriately. This approach is essential to establishing a robust and effective cyber security framework, considering that it relies on identity as a key security resource.
For details on how to get up to speed, check out the CyberArk Blueprint for Identity Security Success Whitepaper
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