Leveraging Identity to discover vulnerabilities and determine proper access
Robust Identity protection starts before attackers reach your digital front door.
Identity is the most common vector of attack for bad actors looking to improperly access sensitive information. Over 80% of breaches stem from some form of credential abuse, making the task of reliably authenticating Identity a core concern for security leaders in every industry.
But in many cases, security and IT leaders limit their focus to the act of authentication, constraining their window of opportunity to thwart would-be attackers to the moment of attack. And, while enforcement is central to any robust security strategy, this overemphasis on the moment of attack ignores opportunities to mitigate damage and prevent attacks before and after authentication.
To provide their organizations with the strongest possible defense against sophisticated threats, security leaders need to adopt a more holistic approach to Identity-powered security –– one that mitigates threats before, during, and after authentication-based attacks.
This blog focuses on the pre-authentication measures that security leaders should prioritize to maximize the strength of their Identity security posture: discovering vulnerabilities and determining proper access.
Why change: The need for a unified solution
When security leaders fully address the pre-authentication aspects of Identity security, they can gain better overall visibility and uncover gaps in their security posture. This enables a proactive approach to Identity security before an attack becomes a breach.
Some organizations manage these responsibilities using an array of individual point solutions. However, this approach adds more complexity and operational friction to the task of keeping data and resources safe. Far from insulating the organization from a threat, the distributed authority and information silos inherent to these point solutions multiply the gaps bad actors can exploit.
A unified approach to Workforce Identity minimizes vulnerabilities by delivering a comprehensive, intuitive, and secure means of tackling the two most important pre-authentication security priorities:
- Discovering vulnerabilities
- Determining proper access
A better way to discover gaps and determine access
Strong risk management begins with a full awareness of where the risk is coming from and what vulnerabilities it might exploit. A unified approach to Identity gives security and IT teams
- Holistic visibility and control of the organization’s Identity posture, enabling a stronger and more timely strategic approach to risk management.
- Critical context and actionable insights to remediation processes.
- Simplified integration with other components of the tech and security stack — including Identity stores, apps, and resources — which eliminates information silos and exposes misconfigurations that need to be addressed.
- Strengthened security for organizations and ease of use for users and admins.
Once vulnerabilities are brought to the surface, the right Identity solution should make the process of determining secure-by-design levels of access simple. A unified approach to Identity allows security and IT teams to:
- Determine secure-by-design access controls and policies for strong authentication, privileged access, and governance across the entire workforce and tech stack.
- Maintain a least privilege standard for all users, preventing coarse-grained provisioning or birthright access configurations that overpermission levels of access.
- Configure privileged access from a unified source of truth.
Okta makes it possible
Okta Workforce Identity Cloud (WIC) unifies the management of digital security across every aspect of Identity, including the exhaustive discovery and remediation of gaps in Identity posture.
For more information on the other stages of threat protection, read our blogs on the unified response to auth and post-auth security.
