The Authorization Status of Identity Safety 2024: An Upheaval in Identity Protection Is Approaching
Identity protection takes center stage given the recent security breaches involving companies like Microsoft, Okta, Cloudflare, and Snowflake, among others. Enterprises are beginning to recognize the necessity for a significant change in how we address identity protection from both a strategic and technological perspective.
Identity safety surpasses mere access provisioning
The traditional perspective of considering identity protection mainly revolving around granting and revoking access for applications and services, often done haphazardly, is no longer adequate. This viewpoint was highlighted as a prevalent theme in the Permiso Security State of Identity Safety Report (2024), which indicates that despite increasing confidence in identifying security risks, nearly half of organizations (45%) still express “concern” or “extreme concern” about their current tools’ ability to identify and protect against identity security breaches.
A survey commissioned by Permiso conducted during the summer, engaging with over 500 IT security and risk professionals having direct control or influence on security and risk decisions, revealed that despite increased investments, maturity, and confidence in cyber risk control measures, organizations are still wary in the face of advancing identity threats.
Notable findings include:
- Software as a Service (SaaS) is perceived as the most precarious environment.
- 93% of organizations claim to be able to catalog identities across all platforms and track keys, tokens, certificates, and any alterations made to any platform.
- 85% can identify “who is performing what” across dispersed authentication boundaries.
- 45% are either “concerned” or “extremely concerned” about their current tools’ ability to identify and thwart identity security threats.
- 45% experienced an identity security incident in the previous year, with impersonation attacks being the primary threat vector.
Can unapproved identities be pinpointed?
Although 86% of organizations believe they can recognize their riskiest identities (human and non-human), nearly half (45%) fell victim to an identity security incident in the last year, with impersonation attacks being the predominant threat vector, indicating that socially engineered attacks persist as a pervasive danger to organizations.
Concerning repercussions for those affected by breaches, the focus on sensitive information like personally identifiable data (PII) and intellectual property (IP) was the top priority for 54% of breached entities. Additionally, 46% of organizations reported that threat actors escalated privileges and targeted their supply chains (45%) on both the vendor and customer sides.
Human identities pose a vulnerable target
An intriguing discovery was that human identities are perceived as the riskiest, with employees ranking at the top. In contrast to widespread industry promotion, non-human identities (e.g., API keys, OAuth tokens, service accounts) are viewed as less risky compared to their human counterparts.
Identity protection is compartmentalized
There is a lack of clarity regarding what identity safety responsibilities entail for the current hybrid and multi-cloud landscape. Despite the majority of organizations utilizing an average of 2.5 public clouds, the IT team (56%) was singled out as primarily accountable for ensuring organizational identity protection across various settings. This might suggest that identity is still predominantly viewed as limited to access provisioning and deprovisioning. According to Jason Martin, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Permiso, this observation could be interpreted by explaining that “identity security has traditionally fallen within the general remit of IT responsibilities, who are tasked with overseeing IT systems, which includes granting access and safeguarding identities. In only a minority of organizations do we see the security department playing a primary role.”
“Security budgets are directed towards safeguarding identities.”
Security budgets seem to be divided into compartments, with SaaS (87%) and IaaS (81%) environments receiving the majority of security investment compared to all environments (46%). In terms of tools, the IaaS layer (66%) has been the primary focus with a mix of cloud native security tools like AWS GuardDuty and CNAPP solutions being utilized.
While organizations exhibit a level of awareness regarding the cybersecurity threats they face, there is room for improvement in detecting and responding to identity threats promptly. Notably, the ability to recognize and prevent credential compromise, account takeover, and insider threats was identified as the most significant concern for organizations.
Advancing towards comprehensive identity security
The responsibility falls on all of us – the vendors, organizations, and the wider security community – to rethink the necessary elements required from a people, process, and technology perspective to safeguard the increasing risk posed by human and non-human identities. In this context, we must transform identity security beyond simply managing access to applications and services, to perceive it as a strategic business catalyst.
Permiso Security was established to tackle this challenge, making unified identity security for all identities in every setting a reality.
Access the full report here: https://hero.permiso.io/state-of-identity-security-survey-report-2024
Discover more about how Permiso can aid in implementing this strategy within your organization.
About Author
