Discovery in the context of identities involves identifying and cataloging all user accounts, wherever they live. This process helps organizations understand who has access to their systems and where potential threats to those systems may exist. However, maintaining visibility and control over all identities across cloud, on-premises, hybrid systems, applications, and identity providers requires automation.

But, discovery processes built into today’s PAM and IGA solutions are not designed to collect identities continuously, leaving large periods of time where additions, removals, and changes to accounts are entirely missed. This has created massive identity security blind spots, especially as the number of human and machine accounts required to implement and integrate security tools and business applications has rapidly increased. These blind spots result in poor identity hygiene and misconfigurations that lead to cyber exposure.

Discovery and Visibility: The Cybersecurity Game Changer

Visibility into all identities requires a clear, real-time view of who is accessing what resources and ongoing monitoring of user activities to detect anomalies that could indicate a security threat. This is where the discovery processes of Identity Attack Surface Management (IASM) solutions come into play. Discovery typically involves three different processes:

1. Querying target systems and applications using their APIs
2. System and identity log parsing and analysis
3. Event-driven data capture

These processes collectively provide comprehensive visibility into all identities across all IT assets and will continuously monitor and track configuration and permission changes to detect identity-based threats. Identity Attack Surface Management platforms, like Hydden, provide this data layer of discovered identities that can be utilized for all other existing IAM investments.  In many situations, the response to the issues uncovered by your IASM discovery analysis is ideally resolved by your existing Privileged Access Management (PAM) and Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) implementations.

Strengthening PAM

PAM is more than simply vaulting accounts and managing credentials. It’s a critical aspect of cybersecurity that manages permissions, remote access, authorization, MFA, session monitoring, and auditing of identities with elevated access to sensitive data and critical systems. Visibility and control from an IASM discovery allows organizations to:

1. Continuously Identify Privileged Accounts: Discovery helps identify all privileged accounts across every system, including those not created as part of the organization’s standard governance process. This cannot be a one-and-done operation and must be continuously performed to ensure incremental changes are tracked and analyzed for anomalies.
2. Control Access: By identifying all privileged accounts and continuously tracking any changes, organizations can ensure that only authorized individuals can access sensitive systems at all times.
3. Monitor Activity: Discovery tools can track the activities of privileged accounts, enabling organizations to detect and respond to suspicious behavior promptly.
4. Mitigate Risks: By providing visibility into all privileged accounts, discovery tools help organizations identify potential vulnerabilities and proactively mitigate risks.

By providing complete visibility into every account and privilege across any infrastructure and application, you can finally be confident that every account is managed and vaulted so you can mature your PAM practice.

Maturing IGA

IGA involves managing identities and their access rights across multiple systems. IASM’s discovery data layer enhances IGA implementations by:

1. Identifying Shadow Accounts: Uncover hidden or forgotten user accounts and detect unauthorized cloud services (shadow IT), thereby preventing potential security risks.
2. Prioritize Access Reviews: Optimize account lifecycle and access reviews by prioritizing the riskiest accounts.
3. Continuous Access Policy Validation: With visibility into all systems, discovery processes should validate the existing method of granting and revoking access rights, ensuring that only the right individuals can access the right resources at the right time.
4. Compliance Monitoring and Reporting: Visibility provides a clear view of who has access to what, when, and why, making it easier to enforce access policies and meet compliance requirements.

By discovering, managing, and assessing accounts in real time, IASM solutions enable you to make strategic changes that mature your existing account lifecycle management, access certification, and governance policies.

Discovery and visibility of identities are not just buzzwords in cybersecurity. They are essential components that bolster the effectiveness of PAM and IGA implementations, thereby fortifying an organization’s overall security posture. By providing visibility into all cloud and on-premises systems, discovery and visibility tools enable organizations to manage their resources effectively, control access, monitor activity, mitigate risks, and enhance their overall cybersecurity posture. As IT environments get more complex, the importance of discovery tools in cybersecurity will only continue to grow.

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