It seems data breaches and cyberattacks have become part of our hyperconnected world. This year alone, we have seen billions of data records compromised, and despite the growing number of threats and the increasing sophistication of attacks, not much has changed in the way businesses secure access to critical resources.
Identity has found its way back onto the front page as organisations come to realize that stolen identity is the number one security issue, and often the weakest link in security postures. To solve this problem, organisations must look across their businesses to ensure the three critical dimensions of identity risk are being addressed:
Three Critical Dimensions of Identity Risk
- Identity assurance: Are users who they claim to be?
- Access assurance: Do we understand what users should be able to do and access?
- Activity assurance: Are users behaving appropriately?
Identity and access assurance is the single most important control for managing digital risk. To truly detect and manage identity risks, organisations should consider a risk-based authentication solution that is able to analyse user access, devices, applications, and behavior to provide businesses with the confidence that users are who they say they are based on previous history.
Additionally, organisations are facing two key challenges that come with managing today’s dynamic workforce:
Key Challenges in Managing a Dynamic Workforce
- Workforce transformation: From remote employees, to gig workers, third-party partners and more, the user population is more dynamic than ever. Identities are scattered everywhere, and multiple points of access leave openings for cyber-attacks at a time when threats are becoming more sophisticated and harder to detect.
- The expanding attack surface: Applications have moved out of the relative safety of enterprise castle walls to the cloud. As apps and data become more accessible through multiple public and private cloud infrastructures, organisations are simultaneously creating more islands of identities and increasing the attack surface.
What Can Happen If Identity Is Badly Managed?
With a seemingly endless stream of high-profile data breaches and malicious cyberattacks, we have seen what can happen when identity is not properly managed. Identity and access management can no longer be an afterthought, and organisations can no longer rely on old security postures in today’s ever-changing security landscape.
We are also seeing new and increased regulations like GDPR become an impetus for organisations to start having important conversations around data, privacy, and compliance. With more at stake, including financial damages in the form of breach-related expenses, regulatory fines, and the potentially irreparable loss of customer trust and reputation, organisations are now looking to adopt innovative and secure solutions to authenticate users seeking access to critical resources.
Critical to this is businesses taking the time to assess and understand where their crown jewels reside in order to protect them.
Source : Techradar