Delinea Extends Scope of Identity Management Platform – Source: securityboulevard.com

Delinea this week updated its platform for managing identities to add a vault for storing managing credentials, analytic tools for tracking user behavior and a framework for automating the management of the lifecycle of an identity from onboarding to offboarding.

Additionally, administrators using the platform to manage access and privileges can now access it via their iOS or Android device.

Phil Calvin, chief product officer for Delinea, said organizations that adopt that platform are now better able to centrally manage access to applications and associated privileges. That centralized approach is critical because it enables business users and cybersecurity teams to collaboratively manage the levels of access being granted.

One of the primary cybersecurity challenges that organizations encounter is access to applications and systems is usually granted by an administrator of, for example, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) application. In many instances, the privileges being granted are well beyond the scope of what an employee actually requires. Of course, the more privileges associated with an account, the more that individual becomes a target for cybercriminals.

Unfortunately, most cybersecurity teams in the absence of any centralized method for managing identity are usually unable to see what privileges have been assigned. It’s usually only during the forensics phase of a breach that they discover privileges were overprovisioned. The Delinea platform makes it possible for cybersecurity teams to instead review privileges to ensure the blast radius of any potential breach is limited, noted Calvin.

Identity is essentially the new security perimeter that cybersecurity teams are expected to defend. The challenge is many individuals often have multiple identities associated with different job functions. More challenging still, many of the individuals accessing applications and services are not employees but rather temporary contractors.

Cybercriminals are, of course, trying to steal as many credentials as possible. In many cases, cybercriminals log into applications much like any other normal user for months before starting to exfiltrate data and inject malware. Many organizations might not even realize credentials have been stolen until months after the fact.

It’s not clear what will be needed to encourage more organizations to unify the management of access and authorization in a way that is tied to specific sets of credentials, but the sooner they do the more likely the overall cybersecurity posture of the organization will improve. The truth is, cybercriminals are counting on a level of inertia regarding the management of identities within the context of a zero-trust IT strategy to remain relatively high, even despite the increased number of audits being conducted by regulators.

In the meantime, cybersecurity teams should assume that most of the credentials being used have been compromised. The best way to ensure that credentials involving, for example, passwords are still secure is to regularly rotate them which, naturally, requires some ability to manage the lifecycle of a credential.

The issue, as always, is that when something is perceived to be difficult to accomplish a general sense of complacency sets in that always plays right into the hands of the cybercriminal.