Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

Organizations have long focused on securing human users – employees, partners and customers. But what about the identities that aren’t tied to a person? Non-human identities (NHIs), including service accounts, bots, APIs, machine identities and more, now outnumber human identities 20:1 in most organizations! Yet, they often lack proper oversight, making them a growing security risk.

Your business depends on the protection of your most critical assets. Prioritizing Tier 0 assets and deploying a tiered administration model is a great way to strengthen the security protecting what matters most – your identities. We will discuss both of these concepts in detail in this post.

The 2024 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) found that compromised credentials consistently appeared as a key attack enabler – with almost 77% of web app breaches enabled by stolen credentials. Organizations are scrambling to protect credentials, and Just-In-Time (JIT) access has emerged as an effective strategy to address these challenges. JIT access grants elevated permissions only when necessary, minimizing the attack surface and reducing the risk of unauthorized access.

Identity and access management (IAM) is part of a world where the only constant is change. Whether from emerging technologies and new cyber threats, or unpredictable human behaviors and shifting business priorities – cybersecurity is in a state of permanent flux. These developments have caused many cybersecurity teams to harden their defenses with methods such as identity-based and passwordless authentication.

If organizations are complying with their regulatory obligations, why are they still being breached? This obvious question exposes a paradox at the heart of everything we do in cybersecurity. It seems that the more we regulate, the more compliance requirements and frameworks we produce, and the more we nurture cybersecurity awareness, the more cyber incidents we face. What’s going on? Where’s the cause and where’s the effect?