Common IT Security Best Practices Continue to be Challenge for Organizations

Woefully inadequate IT processes for managing user accounts and access continue to create major security and compliance risks

One Identity, a leader in helping organizations get identity and access management (IAM) right, released study results showing significant gaps in how organizations manage accounts used to access IT infrastructure, systems, and data—gaps that could result in major security and compliance deficiencies.

The results of the study of more than 900 IT security professionals, conducted by Dimensional Research, spotlights how common security best practices—such as timely removal of access to corporate data and applications, dormant account identification, and role administration—continue to be a challenge and concern for organizations worldwide.

Most alarmingly, 70 percent of respondents express a lack of confidence that all former employees and employees changing roles are fully deprovisioned—or have their accounts changed or removed—in a timely enough manner. Therefore, their accounts remain open and available with active authorization even after an employee changes roles or leaves the organization.

Only 14 percent say they remove access for users immediately upon a change in HR status. Related findings point to concerning practices regarding management of dormant accounts. Only 9 percent are confident that they have no dormant accounts, only 36 percent are “very confident” they know which dormant user accounts exist, and a remarkable 84 percent confessed that it takes a month or longer to discover these dangerous open doors into the enterprise.

Best practices demand that access be removed for employee accounts that are no longer active. In the case where an employee changes roles, access needs to be altered to provide the new access and authorization required for the new role and remove access that is no longer needed. Oftentimes, the removal of no-longer-needed access is overlooked.

When user accounts are not deprovisioned (often called dormant accounts), they are open invitations for disgruntled employees, hackers or other threat actors, who can exploit the accounts and gain access to sensitive systems and information, resulting in data breaches or compliance violations.

The user account access and management challenges are not limited to legacy systems and data, as they also are relevant for newer technologies such as file-sync-and-share services like Box and Dropbox. Only 14 percent of respondents report deprovisioning access to these accounts in a centralized/automated manner. Other findings from One Identity’s Global State of IAM Study provide further evidence of the challenges organizations face with regard to managing employee access to IT resources:

Only one in four are “very confident” that user rights and permissions in their organizations are correct for the individuals’ roles. Seventy-one percent are concerned about the risk represented by dormant accounts. Ninety-seven percent have a process for identifying dormant users, but only 19 percent have tools to aid in finding them. Only 11 percent audit enterprise roles more frequently than monthly.

“Today, when employees leave an organization or change roles within the same organization, it’s more critical than ever that any access rights to the corporate network, systems, and data are revoked or modified to match their new status,” said John Milburn, president and GM of One Identity.

“The overwhelming lack of confidence that organizations are doing this in a timely manner means they are still grappling with these same critical issues, offering up a gaping security hole for  former employees, or hackers to exploit those identities, and wreak  havoc for hours, weeks or even months to come. Those that don’t finally get this under control are more likely than ever to suffer a significant breach, and all of the resulting major impacts on reputation, brand, and stock valuation.”

Credential-based attack vectors
One of the easiest ways for malicious outsiders, or even insiders, to gain access into an organization’s IT network is by stealing user credentials such as user names and passwords. Once access is secured, a series of lateral movements and privilege escalation activities can procure access to the type of information and systems that are most coveted by bad actors, such as a CEO’s email, customer or citizen personally identifiable information, or financial records.

The more time inactive accounts are available to bad actors, the more damage can potentially be done, including data loss, theft and leakage, which could end up in irreparable damage to reputations, compliance violations, as well as possibly large fines and a significant drop in stock valuation.

Solutions available today such as One Identity Starling Identity Analytics & Risk Intelligence (IARI) , can help organizations reduce identity-related risks associated with improper user entitlements or access rights by providing significant visibility and insight. With proactive analysis and the ability to compare user entitlements, IARI can rapidly pinpoint situations where entitlements are out of norm, and pose an elevated risk.

“Exploitation of excessive or inappropriate entitlements remains a goldmine for threat actors who will then capitalize on access to gain a foothold in an organization to steal data or inject malware. This data is a wake-up call to organizations that they need sound solutions in place now, such as One Identity Starling IARI, that  accelerate the deprovisioning of access, proactively discover of dormant accounts, and help ensure appropriate access rights across the entire organization and user population,” added Jackson Shaw, senior director of Product Management for One Identity.


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