Identity Protection

What is Identity Protection?

Identity protection in an enterprise involves the use of measures and strategies to safeguard enterprise identities. Enterprise identities are the digital identities of employees, devices, applications, and other entities within an organization. Managing these identities is crucial for maintaining security, productivity, and compliance.

Need for Identity Protection

Identity threats are involved in 80% of all cyberattacks, according to the CrowdStrike 2023 Global Threat Report. These are serious threats that compromise corporate and personal information and put organizations at grave risk. Sophisticated attackers like APTs and ransomware actors typically start their campaign with an attack on identities. Attackers can exploit identities on endpoints, applications, and identity stores. The effective management of enterprise identities is essential for protecting organizational assets, ensuring compliance with regulations, and supporting efficient business operations.
An identity threat is difficult to detect with traditional cybersecurity approaches.

Core components of identity security

The core components of traditional identity threat protection are as follows:

Authentication

Authentication is the process of verifying that a user or system is who they claim to be. Typically, authentication is carried out by using credentials like passwords, biometrics, or multi-factor authentication (MFA).

Authorization

Authorization determines what an authenticated user is allowed to do—granting or denying access to resources based on roles, policies, or attributes. It ensures that users operate within the boundaries of their assigned permissions, minimizing the risk of privilege abuse.

Privilege management

Privilege management involves assigning, controlling, and auditing user access to sensitive systems or data.

Threat detection and response

Threat detection and response focuses on identifying attacks on identities and responding to potential breaches. This also includes protecting identity repositories.

Logging and monitoring

Identity protection also requires continuous logging and monitoring of access events, credential usage, and system changes. These logs provide critical forensic insights during investigations and help detect suspicious patterns.

Identity life cycle management

Identity life cycle management oversees identities from creation to deactivation, covering onboarding, role changes, and offboarding. Automating this process ensures timely updates, reduces human error, and ensures consistent access governance throughout an identity’s lifespan.

Types of Identity Threat Protection Solutions

Organizations use a variety of identity protection mechanisms to safeguard their digital assets and ensure secure access to systems and data.

• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA):

  Requires users to provide two or more verification factors to gain access to a resource, enhancing security beyond just a username and password.

• Single Sign-On (SSO):

  Allows users to log in once and gain access to multiple applications or systems, reducing password fatigue and improving security.

• Role-Based Access Control (RBAC):

  Assigns permissions to users based on their role within the organization, ensuring that individuals have access only to the resources necessary for their job.

• Identity and Access Management (IAM) Solutions:

  Centralized systems for managing user identities, authentication, and access to resources, often integrating various security policies and compliance requirements.

• Directory Services:

  Centralized repositories like Active Directory or LDAP that store and manage user information and access permissions across the organization.

• Privileged Access Management (PAM):

  Controls and monitors access to critical systems and data by privileged users, ensuring that elevated access is granted only when necessary and with proper oversight.

• Federated Identity Management:

  Allows users to use their organizational credentials to access resources across different domains or organizations, facilitating seamless collaboration while maintaining security.

• Zero Trust Architecture:

  A security model that assumes no user or device is inherently trustworthy, enforcing strict access controls and continuous verification of identity and access rights.

Common Types of Identity-Based Attacks

Phishing

In a phishing attack, cybercriminals impersonate trusted entities to trick individuals into revealing sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords, or financial details. These attacks often arrive via email, text message, or fake websites, exploiting human trust to gain unauthorized access.

Identity Theft

Identity theft occurs when an attacker illegally obtains and uses someone else’s personal information, such as social security numbers or government IDs, to impersonate them.

Account Takeover

In an account takeover, a threat actor gains control of a legitimate user’s account—often through stolen credentials or phishing—and uses it to commit fraud or access restricted systems.

Malicious Remote Connection

This attack involves unauthorized access to a system through remote desktop protocols (RDP), VPNs, or other remote access technologies. Once connected, the attacker can exfiltrate data, deploy malware, or manipulate internal systems as if they were an authorized user.

Lateral Movement

Lateral movement is a post-exploitation technique where an attacker, after breaching one system, navigates through a network to escalate privileges and access other sensitive systems. It allows threat actors to deepen their control within an environment.

Identity Attacks

Some of the biggest cyber attacks in recent times have been identity-based attacks.

• Equifax breach:

  This attack is one of the most significant identity-based data breaches. It exposed the personal information of approximately 147 million people, including Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, and in some cases, driver’s license numbers.

• Yahoo:

  Yahoo experienced two massive data breaches that affected over 500 million accounts. Information stolen included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords, and in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers.

• Marriott International:

  This breach impacted up to 500 million guests. The attackers accessed sensitive information, including passport numbers, phone numbers, email addresses, and credit card information.

• Experian:

  The credit bureau experienced a data breach in Brazil that leaked the personal information of 220 million individuals.

Identity Protection – Industry Use Case – Healthcare

Healthcare organizations are a prime target for cybercriminals due to their rich trove of sensitive data. Adversaries target identity architecture in healthcare organizations to gain access to credentials for privilege escalation and lateral movement. Insider threats are a particular concern because they have trusted access to medical data and files containing sensitive healthcare information. Defense teams find it challenging to detect insider threats using traditional security solutions because the use of trusted access does not trigger anomaly-based alerts and leaves no clear signal in the logs

The Health Industry Cybersecurity Practices (HICP) document, released by the Healthcare and Public Health Sector Coordinating Council, posits cyber deception as an essential part of a comprehensive security posture, guiding how healthcare organizations can implement cyber deception techniques like honeypots, honeytokens, and other decoys to strengthen their defense strategy. Several government standards and organizations require or recommend active defense and deception.

Healthcare organizations can implement cyber deception techniques, such as deploying honeypots, honeytokens, and other decoys, to create a layered defense and make it more difficult for attackers to gain access to sensitive data. This also has additional benefits such as disrupting attacks, early warning of intrusions, and reduction to the impact of a successful attack. Additional use cases for deception include social engineering and attacks against network connected medical devices. Deception plays an important role in IoT healthcare devices because it can use decoy elements such as false credentials, simulated data, and decoys to detect malicious network activities without having to load software on the devices. Many healthcare organizations have successfully deployed cyber deception and have realized its benefits towards identity security.

Why Should Organizations Care About Identity Protection?

Organizations must make identity protection a priority to protect sensitive information, ensure operational integrity, for legal and regulatory compliance, and to safeguard their reputation.
Identity protection safeguards sensitive information such as personal data, financial records, and proprietary business information. Unauthorized access to this data can lead to data breaches, financial losses, and legal repercussions. Strong identity protection mechanisms, like multi-factor authentication (MFA) and robust access controls, help prevent cyber attacks such as phishing, credential stuffing, and account takeover.

Many jurisdictions have stringent regulations regarding data protection and privacy, such as GDPR in Europe, CCPA in California, and HIPAA for healthcare in the U.S. Effective identity protection helps organizations comply with these regulations. Failure to protect personal data can lead to significant financial penalties and legal actions. Organizations that experience data breaches or identity theft incidents can suffer damage to their reputation. Effective identity protection helps maintain customer trust and public confidence.
Data breaches and identity theft can lead to significant financial losses, including legal fees, fines, and costs associated with incident response and remediation.

Advanced Identity Protection with Acalvio

Traditional security solutions are good, but they are not enough for complete identity protection. Attackers impersonate legitimate users to gain access to enterprise assets. Traditional security solutions are unable to distinguish between the legitimate and malicious use of identities. In addition, there is insider threat risk, which cannot be effectively countered by traditional security solutions.

Deception technology is a proven approach for detecting current and evolving identity threats with precision and speed. Acalvio ShadowPlex Honey Accounts and Honeytokens for CrowdStrike Falcon® Identity Protection are based on Deception Technology and provide a new layer in the Defense-in-Depth offering for identity protection. Because a legitimate user will have no reason to interact with these deceptive assets, any access or alterations of a honey account triggers a dedicated high-fidelity detection, giving SOC analysts detailed insights and the adversary attack path.

Acalvio’s Identity Protection solution detects identity threats before the adversary targets the identity infrastructure. Acalvio Honey Accounts and Honeytokens are designed to detect even zero-day threats and are the perfect solutions to deploy in zero-trust environments for Identity Protection.

ShadowPlex Identity Attack Surface Management (ASM) enables proactive visibility and reduction of the identity attack surface. Organizations can combine Identity ASM with Acalvio’s  deception-based detection and response to protect identities and accelerate Zero Trust.