This means identity can no longer rest solely in the realm of CIOs, CTOs and CISOs. Improving identity security means ensuring that employees at every level of the organization understand the nature of the threat and the importance of addressing it—which means it's critical to generate buy-in from entry-level employees all the way up to the CEO and corporate board. Within the current threat landscape, a single weak point can lead to catastrophe. Today, a comprehensive approach to identity security requires the entire organization to work together.
The Threat To Identities Continues To Grow
One of the reasons identities are under threat today is that they are, unfortunately, not particularly difficult to compromise—especially as the number of digital identities in use continues to skyrocket. Today's businesses aren't managing a few hundred identities anymore. It's not uncommon for enterprises today to manage tens (or even hundreds) of thousands of identities across their digital ecosystem. Beyond this, the average company now uses more than 100 software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications. Even organizations with a reasonably good understanding of the process are finding it difficult to keep pace without the proper solution.
Another reason identities tend to be vulnerable is very simple: human error. Human beings make mistakes. It's in our nature. Attackers are capitalizing on this fact at an alarming rate by engaging in social engineering schemes, taking advantage of common misconfigurations and, generally, exploiting the fact that tricking a person into handing over their credentials tends to be significantly easier than evading cybersecurity tools. The numbers are alarming: The 2022 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) indicated that 82% of breaches now involve a human element such as stolen credentials, phishing or misconfigurations. Social engineering alone was implicated in 20% of all breaches cataloged in the report—a staggering number for a single tactic.
Addressing this problem begins with improving identity security—but the unfortunate truth is that the more secure something is, the harder it tends to be to use. Most businesses will prioritize speed and convenience over security primarily because it's easier to draw a direct line from smooth, unimpeded operations to ROI. When employees experience friction, it slows down operations. An employee who has to ask for special permission to access a certain part of the network twice a day isn't going to care about security reasons; they're just going to be frustrated.
However, limiting access and restricting permissions is one of the most effective ways to limit the potential damage from an identity-based attack—which means organizations need to begin the transition toward prioritizing identity security in a thoughtful and intentional way.
Laying The Groundwork For A Strong Identity Program
Beginning this transition may sound easy, but it isn't as simple as putting up a new firewall or installing new antivirus software. Most employees won't be meaningfully affected by those changes. However, identity security touches every level of the organization, which makes it fundamentally different. Getting started requires a few important steps:
1. Establish a big, bold vision. Plant a big stake in the ground that gets people excited, both on the security team and beyond. Before getting started, it's important for employees to know what the ultimate goal is. Nobody gets excited about overly technical explanations or promises of incremental progress. Let employees know that autonomous identity management—balancing speed, convenience and security—is the goal.
2. Generate buy-in. Generating executive buy-in is always important, but identity security requires a different level of buy-in. Yes, it's important to have support from company leadership, but it's also important for everyday employees to understand the "why" and the "how" of identity security. It's important to let them know that while identity security can generate additional friction in some areas, it also has the potential to streamline others.
3. Take inventory and rack up quick wins. The fastest way to generate support for an identity program is to prove its worth quickly. Companies can start by taking inventory of their employee and non-employee identities and quickly bringing them under the same umbrella. By tackling major repositories of user data and prioritizing their most important or frequently used SaaS applications, IT teams can quickly demonstrate the effectiveness of improved identity management.
4. Start to employ AI capabilities and eliminate manual pain points. Manually setting permissions and entitlements for hundreds of thousands of identities is impossible at the scope and complexity of most enterprises. Once an organization's identities are safely under a single management umbrella, AI can be deployed to automatically configure entitlements, flag unused permissions, streamline access requests and more—decreasing friction and improving security.
Identity Security Is A Need At Every Level
Limiting access and restricting permissions will always cause some degree of concern, but establishing a clear vision and quickly demonstrating how improved identity security can benefit everyone from low-level employees to C-suite and board members can go a long way toward generating the needed support. The onus for identity security cannot be placed solely on the IT team, the security team or individual employees. In today's world, strong identity security requires buy-in at every level of the organization through investment in the development of a comprehensive strategy, the adoption of new and valuable tools and adherence to security best practices. Together, we can get better.
