Identity and access layers have always been threat actors' first line of attack. The compulsive shift to remote and cloud environments during the pandemic has further opened doors for attackers, posing a severe threat to an organization's resources.
According to Gartner, identity is the new perimeter for today's decentralized IT ecosystems. When adversaries get a hold of an identity, the number of ways they can manipulate the critical data and resources within the network is endless. Therefore, attackers are constantly innovating ways to target Active Directory and other identity infrastructure to launch identity-based attacks.
These attacks have led to the bloom of comprehensive tools that are aimed at managing identities and securing them. Organizations use these tools to defend identities; implement stricter identity-security policies such as the deployment of MFA and SSO; and develop ways to properly configure, maintain, and monitor their identity and access management infrastructure.
Identity theft protection has become crucial for organizations since attackers use credentials to leverage Active Directory and progress their attacks by moving laterally through undetected networks.
Verizon's Data Breach Investigation Report 2022 states that 82% of all breaches were because of the human element that's dominating the attack landscape. Human elements include credential misuse, social engineering, phishing emails, and more.
Identity threat Detection and response (ITDR) is a new category of security solutions designed explicitly to secure identities and their infrastructure. ITDR complements the functionality of solutions like endpoint detection and response (EDR), network detection and response (NDR), and extended detection and response (XDR). What sets ITDR apart from these solutions is its ability to detect credential-based attack techniques such as credential theft, privilege misuse, attacks on Active Directory, and risky entitlements that pave the way for innumerable attacks.
Identity security is critical to the recent threat landscape. Most identity protection systems on the market can track and protect only identities that are in their directory through secured authentication and authorization. ITDR goes a step further by providing wide visibility into credential misuse and by ensuring the right people have access to the right resources not only within endpoints but across multi-cloud environments, too. ITDR limits what hackers can exploit. It reduces the exposure to vulnerabilities like saved credentials on endpoints, excessive entitlements, and Active Directory misconfigurations that leave identities open to attack.
With sophisticated threat actors leveraging the cloud shift and launching exclusive attacks on the cloud, ITDR solutions give you the advantage by offering visibility into both human and non-human identities, i.e., applications, containers, serverless functions, and other assets.
Once an ITDR solution detects an identity attack, it immediately isolates the compromised system from the network to contain the attack. It also redirects the attacker to a trap with fake data as an added defensive layer. Its extended visibility allows you to monitor your environment continuously, detect threats, enable efficient risk remediation, and maintain least privilege.
It's essential for organizations to detect and prevent attacks at endpoints, in Active Directory, and in the cloud. Deploying an ITDR solution has hence become a necessity to find credential misuse, fix entitlement violations, stop cybercriminals from moving laterally through the organization's infrastructure, and derail the threat.
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