Identity and access control

As I mentioned in the previous chapter, we are seeing more attacks involving either the reuse of stolen credentials or brute-force attacks that exploit weak passwords.

With most organizations now adopting different SaaS services, identity is becoming the most important part of not just ensuring that you have sufficient secure authentication methods, but also ensuring that you have control of the life cycle of the user accounts.

Note

The Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack in 2021, which took down the largest fuel pipeline in the US across the East Coast, was the result of a single compromised username and password that was not MFA enabled. This account was supposedly no longer in use, but the password was found on the dark web.

The life cycle of a user is no longer just about ensuring that the account is disabled after the user leaves the company, but also ensuring that access to any third-party SaaS service is also managed. This means ensuring...