Which frameworks assist in ensuring compliance for NHIs? – Source: securityboulevard.com

Why Compliance Frameworks are Crucial for NHIs?

Could the answer to your organization’s cybersecurity woes lie in Non-Human Identities (NHIs)? The management of NHIs and their secrets has emerged as a key facet of cybersecurity strategy, with the potential to significantly decrease the risk of security breaches and data leaks.

Non-Human Identities: The Silent Pillars of Cybersecurity

Where data security is paramount, NHIs generally fly under the radar. However, this perception could not be farther from the truth. In simple terms, NHIs are machine identities used within cybersecurity ecosystems. They are formulated by combining a unique identifier or a “Secret” (for instance, an encrypted password or token) and permissions granted by a destination server – akin to a passport and its allied visa.

Securing NHIs and their secrets, thus, involves protecting identities (the passport holders, if you will), their access credentials (the passport itself), and monitoring their behaviors within the system. To this end, NHI management offers a comprehensive solution by tackling each stage of their lifecycle, from discovery and classification to threat detection and remediation.

Compliance Frameworks That Facilitate NHI Management

Where does a compliance framework fit into this? These frameworks act as standard-bearers for NHIs’ best practices, offering a systematic and structured approach to their management. They are especially beneficial in addressing the disconnect between security and R&D teams, creating a secure cloud environment.

Benefits of Adaptation

Among the many benefits of adapting these compliance frameworks for NHI management include, reduced risk through proactive threat identification and mitigation, improved compliance with regulatory requirements, increased efficiency courtesy of automated NHI management, enhanced visibility and control, as well as cost savings from automated secrets rotation and NHI decommissioning.

Exploring the Landscape of Compliance Frameworks

So which compliance frameworks are best suited for NHI management? While the choice depends largely on an organization’s specific needs and circumstances, certain frameworks have universally acknowledged merits.

For instance, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework offers guidelines for identifying and managing cybersecurity risks, which can be aptly applied for NHIs and secrets management. The widely respected ISO 27001 standard can support your organization in establishing, implementing, maintaining, and continually improving an information security management system.

Then there are industry-specific standards like the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) used in the financial domain or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) relevant for healthcare providers, which tackle the unique requirements and challenges of NHIs in their respective domains.

Embracing a Data-Driven Approach

The key to successful implementation of these frameworks lies in their integration with data-driven insights. It’s vital to keep a finger on the pulse of the evolving and adapt the compliance strategy accordingly.

To explore more data-driven insights related to NHI management, do check out the following posts on our website: Agentic AI & OWASP Research, NHI Threats Mitigation – Part 3, and NHI Threat Mitigation – Part 2.

Understanding Compliance Frameworks & NHIs

Compliance frameworks are the orchestra conductors in the symphony of cybersecurity management, bringing together different elements of security and ensuring harmony. In essence, they represent a set of standards, guidelines, and best practices, which, when correctly applied in the context of NHIs, map the path towards a formidable security posture.

So how does one implement the right compliance framework while managing NHIs and their secrets? It begins with understanding what these frameworks entail and which ones align with your organization’s data management objectives besides its legal and regulatory requirements.

Appreciating the Complexity of NHIs Lifecycles

A significant part of managing NHIs is comprehending their lifecycle. From creation and deployment to maintenance and decommissioning, every stage needs careful monitoring. A proper understanding of this lifecycle impacts the way secrets are handled and reused. Uniquely, different lifecycle stages pose different risks, calling for dynamic risk management strategies – again, something that a robust compliance framework can assist with.

How Compliance Frameworks Impact NHIs Management

Apart from ensuring standard practices and keeping organizations legally compliant, these frameworks offer several specific benefits to NHI management.

To start, they bring clarity to the scope of NHIs management. Different compliance frameworks give specific definitions of who or what can be considered an NHI, how they should be classified, and what kind of data and functionality they can access.

Also, they provide a basis for creating and enforcing policies, for instance, who has authorization to create, modify, or decommission NHIs and their secrets. If consistently executed, this instills discipline in managing NHIs, keeping the risk of insiders threats at bay.

Lastly, the frameworks guide policy enforcement and auditing. They give clear instructions on how to document enforcement and auditing activities for internal and external auditors. Rigorous auditing is particularly crucial for NHIs, given their wide usage and potential to be exploited if not adequately managed.

Achieving Excellence in NHI Management

Excellence in NHI management comes from a clear understanding of what NHIs are, their role in cybersecurity, and the particular risks they pose – knowledge that is central to leveraging compliance frameworks effectively. Once this foundation is laid, organizations can pick and choose from various compliance frameworks available to them, fine-tuning the chosen one to their specific needs. Quite notably, this arena doesn’t leave any room for complacency. NHI management must evolve with them, with compliance frameworks providing the needed direction.

Going Beyond Compliance – The Future of NHIs Management

While compliance frameworks play a pivotal role, NHI management’s true efficacy comes from a broader security strategy that goes beyond mere compliance. It involves investing in technologies that provide deep visibility into NHIs and their secrets, detecting threats in real time, and quickly initiating remedial actions. Parallelly, it calls for strengthening the human factor, educating personnel about the importance of NHIs, and their role in upholding the organization’s cybersecurity.

To gain a comprehensive understanding of non-human identities and strategies for their effective management, click here. For insights into how phishing attempts can target NHI, this article provides some eye-opening information. Concurrently, Connolly et al (2023) present an analytical perspective on data protection while Konrad et al. (2021) discuss an innovative approach to mitigate data breaches.

Managing NHIs becomes crucial. Backed by strategic application of compliance frameworks and a comprehensive understanding of NHIs, organizations can navigate this to ensure security within their systems for the foreseeable future.

The post Which frameworks assist in ensuring compliance for 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/which-frameworks-assist-in-ensuring-compliance-for-nhis/