No one has to tell you that your identity environment is the focal point of risk. It is the target of threat actors due to the sensitive information involved and the connection between your identity management solution and mission-critical applications and solutions. Therefore, mitigation should be a primary objective for any organization.
Identity Risk Management involves identifying, assessing and mitigating risks associated with digital identities to prevent unauthorized access and data breaches. Protecting against unauthorized access requires a comprehensive plan that addresses authentication, access controls and monitoring to ensure only verified users can access sensitive systems and information.
Risk assessment, compliance and continuous monitoring work together to identify vulnerabilities, enforce regulatory requirements and proactively detect identity threats by mitigating identity risks.
Common Risks and Challenges
Many risks impact identity security, most of which are characterized by outstanding credentials, outdated protocols, and, of course, human factors.
- Credential sprawl – the proliferation of identities, access rights, and credentials across systems increases the attack surface and the risk of compromise
- Weak password policies – short, easily surmised passwords or passwords that are not frequently rotated are an easy avenue for threat actors to compromise your environment
- Integration with legacy systems – outdated protocols and controls, lack of visibility, and granular control can render centralized and secure policies more challenging to implement and enforce
- Human factors and social engineering play a tremendous role in risk management. Threat actors often exploit our weaknesses, using deception and anticipating our behaviors to their advantage
Ephemeral Accounts: A Risk Not Worth Taking
Ephemeral accounts can be easily categorized as a form of credential sprawl. Ephemeral accounts are temporary digital identities or credentials that expire after a short time, limiting exposure and reducing the attack surface within Identity Risk Management strategies. They are often used as a quick remedy to avoid using local or shared accounts and are used in nearly every industry. Banks and financial institutions use ephemeral accounts to grant employees access to financial systems. Government and defense agencies use them to grant temporary permissions to personnel on a per-project basis. Healthcare organizations also use ephemeral accounts to provide a rotating staff of medical professionals with short-term access to patient health records.
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Ephemeral accounts, which are temporarily created and deleted, can increase your attack surface, creating an opportunity for a threat actor to follow suit by creating their own temporary accounts and then removing them, thereby remaining undetected by security solutions. When the account is used in a breach, the perpetrator can move undetected within your organization, accessing sensitive information and mission-critical applications and systems. This is a tremendous risk that is often uncovered during logging or an audit, particularly through visibility of an obfuscated account with multiple uses or an account with no known user or owner.
Locking down ephemeral accounts involves securing their temporary nature through strict policies, automation, automated deprovisioning, and oversight to ensure they are not configured with any static access rights. Those rights can be granted as needed using a solution that offers just-in-time (JIT) access, ensuring that users have access only to what they need, when they need it. This assures that there is zero standing privilege and, therefore, no avenue for threat actors looking to compromise your environment. No longer will your security operations center consider it acceptable for an account with a random name, not tied to a specific user, to be a regular occurrence.
These protections safeguard your organization from harm while simplifying the auditing process by providing clear logs that define privileges and account assignments with a clear purpose. It is clear what each account is being used for and by whom.