Leveraging Identity to enforce secure-by-design access policies
To provide their organizations with the strongest possible defense against the rising tide of sophisticated threats, security leaders need to adopt an approach to Identity-powered security that mitigates threats before, during, and after authentication-based attacks.
Central to this approach is authentication itself –– specifically, the robust enforcement of phishing-resistant authentication protocols across every device and system. It all boils down to an Identity strategy that can ensure the right person has the right level of access at the right time.
The threat environment makes the responsibility to enforce these protocols more urgent –– and more complicated. According to IBM, phishing is the leading initial attack vector for successful breaches, accounting for 41% of incidents. Identity is at the center of every organization’s risk profile: Per Verizon, over 80% of data breaches in 2023 involved stolen credentials.
Today, we’ll focus on the authentication tools and strategies security leaders should employ to maximize their organization’s ability to thwart potential attackers at the moment of attack to prevent improper access to sensitive resources, applications, and data.
Why change: The need for a unified solution
To cover the full breadth of their Identity-related security needs, some organizations employ a network of individual point solutions to address different functions. For example, they may use one Identity Provider for governance, another for MFA and SSO, and yet another for breach detection.
However, this approach adds more complexity and operational friction to the task of keeping data and resources safe. The distributed authority and information siloes inherent to these legacy solutions multiply the number of vulnerabilities bad actors can exploit.
A unified approach to Workforce Identity resolves this issue by integrating governance with threat detection, ensuring the enforcement of least-privilege access across users, resources, and devices.
Access policies for the modern workforce
Organizations need a modern way to enforce secure-by-design access controls to ensure the right person has the right level of access at the right time. This solution must deliver a robust defense against phishing attacks while granting employees secure, privileged access to key information. In a landscape increasingly defined by third-party relationships and part-time, contract, and remote employees, this Identity solution must also include a means of granting targeted, secure temporary access to specific systems and resources.
Strong enforcement of access policies begins with the right authentication factors and governance tools. A unified approach to Identity gives security and IT teams
- Phishing-resistant authentication factors are capable of mitigating the impact of different types of potential breaches (e.g., phishing attacks, session theft, unauthorized local activity) across operating systems and devices.This includes secure options like MFA and SSO and, in especially sensitive cases, biometric options.
- Automated provisioning and deprovisioning features that ensure appropriate access changes when someone joins, leaves, or moves within the organization
- The ability to implement time-bound access requests for sensitive permissions and critical infrastructure
- A comprehensive means of enforcing best security practices for shared privileged accounts with features like password vaulting and transactional phishing-resistant MFA factors
Okta makes it possible
Okta Workforce Identity Cloud unifies digital security management across every aspect of Identity, including the enforcement of phishing-resistant authentication across the organization.
For more information on the other stages of threat protection, check out our blogs on the unified response to pre-auth and look out for our upcoming blog on post-auth security.
