How can legacy IAM systems be updated to support NHIs? – Source: securityboulevard.com

Could Your Legacy IAM Be The Achilles Heel of Your Cybersecurity?

When security breaches and data leaks proliferate, organizations grapple with the rising challenge of protecting their digital assets. This is particularly true for organizations with legacy Identity and Access Management (IAM) systems. While these systems have served us well in the past, could they be turning into liabilities? If a new generation of Non-Human Identities (NHIs) becomes central to the digital environment, the pressing question becomes: How can legacy IAM systems be updated to support NHIs?

The Role of NHIs in Modern Cybersecurity

NHIs are machine identities employed. These identities are complex constructs, created by combining an encrypted password, token, or key (the “Secret”) and the permissions provided to that Secret by a destination server. Non-human entities and their “Secrets” are, thus, akin to tourists holding passports, carrying with them certain privileges granted by the visa in those passports. Managing these NHIs and their secrets is a task of notable significance, involving the vital responsibility of securing both the identities and their access credentials while monitoring their behaviors within the system.

The Pressing Need to Update Legacy IAM Systems

While legacy IAM systems have reliably catered to human identities, their support for machine-based, non-human identities is often far from comprehensive. This creates substantial security gaps that cybercriminals are increasingly exploiting. Many organizations often try to bridge these gaps using point solutions like secret scanners. However, such solutions only offer limited protection. An integrated approach to manage NHIs and their secrets is required to ensure end-to-end cybersecurity.

The Strategic Importance of Updating Legacy IAM Systems

Comprehensive NHI management is now an integral part of a robust cybersecurity strategy. By adopting a holistic approach that addresses all lifecycle stages — from discovery and classification to threat detection and remediation — organizations can dramatically reduce the risk of breaches and data leaks.

Updating legacy IAM systems to support NHIs has several key benefits:

• Reduced Risk: Proactive identification and mitigation of security risks drastically reduce the likelihood of breaches and data leaks.
• Improved Compliance: Policy enforcement and audit trails help in fulfilling regulatory requirements.
• Increased Efficiency: Automation of NHIs and secrets management liberates security teams to focus on strategic initiatives.
• Enhanced Visibility and Control: Centralized access management and governance give a comprehensive overview.
• Cost Savings: Automating secrets rotation and NHIs decommissioning reduces operational costs.

Rerouting Your Strategy For Legacy IAM Update

Integrating NHIs into your IAM systems can be a complex process that demands meticulous planning and execution. It requires reviewing and revising existing policies, procedures, and protocols to ensure that they are aligned with the unique needs and demands of non-human identities.

The process begins with a meticulous discovery phase where all non-human identities and secrets within your organization are identified and classified based on their role, behavior, and level of access.

The next crucial step is to implement stringent policies governing NHI and Secrets. This includes advanced access control measures, secrets rotation policies, and robust threat detection and remediation protocols.

Finally, the transition from a secrets-focused strategy to a comprehensive NHI-based approach should be reinforced with rigorous training and awareness programs. Your teams need to understand the nuances of NHI management and their role in ensuring its success.

Updating legacy IAM systems to support NHIs is an urgent requirement for modern organizations. By strategically managing NHIs, you can safeguard your organization’s critical digital assets and ensure continued resilience.

While the task may seem daunting, the payoff in terms of reduced security risks, improved compliance, and operational efficiency, makes it a worthy investment. With the right strategy and execution, legacy IAM systems can indeed be transitioned to robust NHIs management platforms, giving your organization the digital shield it needs to thrive.

Are you ready for a paradigm shift for your Legacy IAM upgradation?

Why should the gap between digital disruption and data protection grow wider when there’s a solution? For the longest time, legacy IAM systems have been consistent in catering to human identities; however, acknowledging and utilizing non-human identities (NHIs) has instigated a compelling shift in approach. Updating legacy systems to support NHIs becomes imperative, especially as non-human entities now form a significant part of the user population.

Navigating the IAM System Upgradation Path

Transitioning from conventional IAM systems, which principally manage simple human identities, to complex machine identities involves more than just an upgrade; it’s a fundamental shift in strategy. The primary hurdle here isn’t just technical; it’s also cultural, requiring a balanced change in mindset.

Mistakes in NHI management can open doors to several vulnerabilities, facilitating unauthorized access, data theft, and system disruptions. As such, it’s advisable to approach this process with due caution, ensuring that each step undertaken is well planned, meticulously executed, and thoroughly tested.

Implementing a Holistic Approach to NHI Management

Taking an integrated approach to NHI management signifies a departure from just protecting the access credentials to protecting the entire identity and tracking their actions within the system creating and managing machine identities, therefore, should encapsulate the entire identity lifecycle. It starts with creation, assignment of secrets, implementation, monitoring and management, and finally decommissioning.

The primary objective of an NHI management strategy should be on preventing NHIs and their secrets from becoming weapons in the wrong hands. By closely monitoring NHIs, detecting abnormal behavior patterns, and taking time-sensitive action, organizations can proactively prevent potential threats.

Value of NHI Management in Future-Ready Cyber Security

While traditional secrets scanners are reactive and limited, a comprehensive NHI management approach is strategic and preventative. By combining advanced technology with thoroughly devised policies and human vigilance, organizations can limit their overall cyber threats.

Through a well-orchestrated NHI management strategy, organizations can stay ahead of the curve. The ability to quickly spot unusual behavior and immediately disable that NHI can contain an attempted breach at its initial stage and significantly mitigate potential impacts.

Shift To NHI Management

The journey from a legacy IAM system to robust NHIs management platform is not a sprint but a well-calculated marathon. The goal is not to attain quick results but to create a durable, resilient, and evolving system that will guard your organization’s data from foreseeable and unpredictable threats.

Technology has a role to play, it is through people that true transformation happens. People with the right knowledge about how NHIs are used and abused, the vulnerabilities in their management, and the underlying principles of a comprehensive NHI management strategy they need to be inculcated among the teams working on your systems. Regular training and knowledge sharing sessions can be the way forward in this direction.

En Route to Robust Cyber Resilience

Be it data breaches, identity theft, or systemic disruptions, the threats to digital assets are increasing as rapidly as technological advances. That being said, updating legacy IAM systems to support NHIs makes organizations competent and ready for these challenges. With an effective NHI management strategy in place, you stand to gain not just improved cyber resilience but also enhanced control over your system’s NHIs, thereby enabling you to leverage them to derive optimal benefits.

The post How can legacy IAM systems be updated to support NHIs? appeared first on Entro.

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Entro authored by Amy Cohn. Read the original post at: https://entro.security/how-can-legacy-iam-systems-be-updated-to-support-nhis/