Rick Cooper
It has been a year since the National Cybersecurity Alliance and the Identity Defined Security Alliance (IDSA) hosted the first Identity Management Day.
Since then, the second Tuesday of April has been recognized as Identity Management Day. As the world becomes increasingly digital, organizations must acknowledge growing security threats and maintain strong cyber hygiene.
Cybersecurity teams often respond to new compliance mandates or recent data breaches by addressing individual security gaps.
Integrating identity and access management (IAM) infrastructure with security solutions provides a more structured way to control how users access and interact with enterprise networks.
An identity-centric strategy can help organizations reduce the risk of intrusion and limit the lateral movement of attackers already inside the network.
The prominence of Identity and Access Management solutions has been increasing over the years. Download this datasheet to know more about IAM.
Featured resource
Hexnode IAM datasheet
Importance of Identity
Identity is the fundamental link between users, devices, and cloud applications. Companies must evolve from a reactive approach to their security protocol. A preventive approach is a well-rounded method since it focuses on avoiding the cyber attack.
A reactive approach is when you face an issue in your IT security and you resolve the issue and place protocols so it doesn’t come up again
With identity theft, the thief gets access to multiple key features like installing and removing software. This allows the attacker to modify, configure applications and gain access to sensitive assets.
Identity is widely known to incorporate a focus on enabling the five A’s :
1. Authentication – Verifying if the users are who they are claiming to be.
2. Authorization – Determining if the individuals are authorized to access the systems.
3. Access to data – Checking the data individuals have access to and the actions they are allowed to take relative to that data.
4. Audit policies – Ensuring that policies are put in place to verify the identity of the user. IT admins should audit and verify the working of these policies.
5. Accountability – In case of a breach, the reason must be immediately diagnosed and the personnel responsible for it must immediately be held accountable.
Where information architecture takes a hit:
Easy Access:
Users tend to prefer easier tools for access and often, the easiest tools of all don’t necessarily have the best security measures and hurt your digital security policy.
Lack of Vigilance:
Corporate servers exchange data every day, and a data breach can prove fatal because many corporations cannot even detect data loss.
Response time gap:
When users adopt new security tools or updated operating systems, they spend significant time relearning their workflows, which often leads to poor outcomes.
Maintain security
Identity-centric security does not advocate for an identity-only approach to security. Data security, application security, and network security are all critical components for complete digital security. This approach, on the other hand, considers identity security as a critical component of IT security.
Corporates should grow past the reactive framework of security and implement new techniques of Zero-trust security model.
Zero trust security
The basic idea behind zero trust is to presume that everything is unsafe by default. The older architecture relied on approved IP addresses, ports, and protocols to establish access controls and validate what the network trusted. This generally means that a user can easily gain access to the network by connecting to a VPN.
In contrast, Zero trust security trusts no network, despite the fact that the device is connected to an internal network.
Use case of Zero trust
- Zero trust’s main goal is to create an advanced access control system that authenticates users based on their identity, security posture, and other factors. Zero trust can provide granular degrees of security by blocking untrusted devices from accessing the organization’s resources using location or device-specific access control policies.
- Firewalls, for example, adopt a “passthrough” technique, checking files as they arrive. When a dangerous file is found, notifications are sometimes too late. In order for an inline proxy architecture to analyze all traffic and encrypted information in real-time, an effective zero trust solution terminates all connections.
- Users connect directly to the apps and resources they need with a zero-trust approach, never to networks. Hence, networks can be compromised, and a change is required in how we view local networks. A zero-trust approach between users and apps reduces the possibility of lateral movement and keeps infected devices from infecting other resources.
- If a breach does occur, it is vital to reduce the radius of the incident. Zero Trust limits an attacker’s credentials and access pathways, giving systems and people time to respond to the attack.
What is Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) and why is it the future of cloud network security?
Implementing zero trust:
In today’s world, cyber hygiene is just as important as regular hygiene, keeping your data safe requires monitoring and following safety protocols.
Password Hygiene:
Maintaining good password hygiene is necessary throughout the organization as one bad password can open up the network to multiple threats. An organization can take the help of software like Hexnode UEM to apply policies on password management. As a best practice, users should create unique, randomized passwords and update them frequently.
When maintaining multiple accounts, it gets harder for the employees to remember multiple log-ins with different passwords. To preserve security, the ideal way would be to use a password-keeping tool that, securely encrypts and saves all the passwords for you.
Multifactor Authentication:
With MFA activated, users must verify their identity in multiple ways before gaining access. They must use secondary methods like OTPs, built-in biometrics, or external tools like Google Authenticator.
Access management:
Make sure the right personnel get access to the right resources. With Hexnode UEM you can make sure to push only the required resources to the user. This way the IT can be sure about who has access to what resource and helps in auditing and accountability.
Secure apps:
With a UEM like Hexnode, you can filter and allow access to apps you deem safe.
Analytics:
With Hexnode analytics you can constantly monitor the enrolled devices, right from their location, state, and compliance.
Is Zero Trust model the final frontier in enterprise security?
Conclusion
Security experts widely agree that an identity-first approach best protects your enterprise. Having an active identity management protocol is a must for complete digital security.
