Did you know identity has quietly become one of the most valuable assets in modern IT environments? The reason is simple: as organizations move toward the likes of cloud services and SaaS platforms, cyber criminals are increasingly focused on exploiting user identities rather than breaching networks directly. In many cases, a compromised identity is the prime opening an attacker requires to operate undetected.
Why Identity Is Now a Prime Target
Traditional security models were built around protecting three key boundaries: networks, devices, and perimeters. Today, however, they’re far less relevant. Employees log in from multiple locations and devices. They often use cloud-based identity systems to access resources.
This shift has made identity the most consistent and scalable attack surface.
Attackers know stealing and abusing legitimate credentials allows them to bypass many security controls entirely. Firewalls, intrusion detection systems, malware protection – these are all far less effective when the activity appears to come from a trusted user. Once an identity is compromised, attackers can move laterally and access sensitive data without triggering obvious alerts.
Common ways identities are exploited
- Phishing and credential harvesting: To capture usernames, passwords, and MFA tokens.
- Password reuse attacks: Leverage credentials from previous data breaches.
- MFA fatigue and push bombing: Utilized to trick users into approving access.
- Abuse of cloud account permissions: This is done to escalate privileges.
- Malicious email rules: These hide alerts or forward sensitive messages.
- Session hijacking and token theft: Done to bypass authentication entirely.
These techniques are particularly effective in cloud and hybrid environments. These environments are where identity systems tend to control access to email, collaboration tools, infrastructure, and data.
How Businesses Can Respond
Forget about only sticking with static, perimeter-focused security. To address identity-based threats, you must incorporate continuous verification and behavioral monitoring. Multi-factor authentication remains essential, yes, but it’s no longer sufficient on its own. Businesses must assume credentials will eventually be compromised – and design controls accordingly.
A strong identity security strategy includes conditional access policies, along with least privilege permissions and continuous monitoring of authentication activity. Logging and visibility across everything from endpoints to cloud platforms is essential for detecting abnormal behavior, such as logins from unexpected locations and sudden privilege changes.
Threat hunting also plays a key supporting role. As outlined by Red Canary, threat hunting focuses on proactively uncovering suspicious or malicious activity that has evaded traditional security controls. In the context of identity, this can include hunting for unusual login patterns for instance, or unexpected email rule creation. Rather than relying solely on alerts, threat hunting assists security teams in identifying subtle signs of identity abuse before attackers establish persistence.
In addition to hunting, your organization should invest in user awareness training and regular access reviews. By integrating identity signals into wider detection and response platforms, it allows your security team to better correlate activity across platforms. It improves both detection accuracy and response speed.
Moving Forward
Identity is now the path to modern enterprise environments, making it an attractive and effective target for attackers. When you treat identity as a critical attack surface – rather than a supporting system – you can better protect your business against today’s most common and damaging cyberthreats.
