Identity Attack Vectors: Strategically Designing and Implementing Identity Security, Second Edition

Today, it’s easier for threat actors to simply log in versus hack in. As cyberattacks continue to increase in volume and sophistication, it’s not a matter of if, but when, your organization will have an incident. Threat actors target accounts, users, and their associated identities—whether human or machine, to initiate or progress their attack. Detecting and defending against these malicious activities should be the basis of all modern cybersecurity initiatives.

This book details the risks associated with poor identity security hygiene, the techniques that external and internal threat actors leverage, and the operational best practices that organizations should adopt to protect against identity theft, account compromises, and to develop an effective identity and access security strategy. As a solution to these challenges, Identity Security has emerged as a cornerstone of modern Identity and Access Management (IAM) initiatives. Managing accounts, credentials, roles, entitlements, certifications, and attestation reporting for all identities is now a security and regulatory compliance requirement.

In this book, you will discover how inadequate identity and privileged access controls can be exploited to compromise accounts and credentials within an organization. You will understand the modern identity threat landscape and learn how role-based identity assignments, entitlements, and auditing strategies can be used to mitigate the threats across an organization’s entire Identity Fabric. 

What You Will Learn

• Understand the concepts behind an identity and how its associated credentials and accounts can be leveraged as an attack vector
  
• Implement an effective identity security strategy to manage identities and accounts based on roles and entitlements, including the most sensitive privileged accounts
  
• Know the role that identity security controls play in the cyber kill chain and how privileges should be managed as a potential weak link
  
• Build upon industry standards and strategies such as Zero Trust to integrate key identity security technologies into a corporate ecosystem
  
• Plan for a successful  identity and access security deployment; create an implementation scope and measurable risk reduction; design auditing, discovery, and regulatory reporting; and develop oversight based on real-world strategies to prevent identity attack vectors

Who This Book Is For

Management and implementers in IT operations, security, and auditing looking to understand and implement an Identity and Access Management (IAM) program and manage privileges in these environments

Morey J. Haber is the Chief Security Officer at BeyondTrust. He has more than 25 years of IT industry experience and has authored four books: Privileged Attack Vectors, Asset Attack Vectors, Identity Attack Vectors, and Cloud Attack Vectors. He is a founding member of the industry group Transparency in Cyber, and in 2020 was elected to the Identity Defined Security Alliance (IDSA) Executive Advisory Board. Morey currently oversees BeyondTrust security and governance for corporate and cloud-based solutions and regularly consults for global periodicals and media. He originally joined BeyondTrust in 2012 as a part of the eEye Digital Security acquisition where he served as a Product Owner and Solutions Engineer since 2004. Prior to eEye, he was Beta Development Manager for Computer Associates, Inc. He began his career as Reliability and Maintainability Engineer for a government contractor building flight and training simulators. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Darran Rolls is CISO and Chief Technology Officer at SailPoint, where he is responsible for directing the company’s technology strategies and security operations, and is co-author of Asset Attack Vectors. He joined BeyondTrust in 2012 as a part of the eEye Digital Security acquisition. He currently oversees BeyondTrust technology management solutions for vulnerability, and privileged and remote access. In 2004, he joined eEye as Director of Security Engineering and was responsible for strategic business discussions and vulnerability management architectures for Fortune 500 clients. Prior to eEye, he was Development Manager for Computer Associates, Inc. (CA), responsible for new product beta cycles and named customer accounts. He began his career as Reliability and Maintainability Engineer for a government contractor building flight and training simulators. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He has a long history in identity management and security at companies such as Tivoli Systems, IBM, Waveset Technologies, and Sun Microsystems. He has helped design, build, and deliver innovative, ground-breaking technology solutions that have defined and shaped the Identity and Access Management (IAM) industry. He frequently speaks at industry events and to customers about IAM and next-generation enterprise security solutions.