Cybercriminals are like rabbits trying to get into your garden (although they’re not nearly as cute). They want to find a hole in your fence, preferably a hole that you don’t know about. Then they can use that hole to steal from your garden again and again. Unfortunately, like a gardener, you don’t always know when there’s a hole in your cyber defenses, or where it is. In fact, sometimes you don’t find out until you notice your data’s been stolen. Identity threat exposure (ITE) detection gives your team the power to find the vulnerabilities in your network, making security weaknesses more visible so your team can close those holes before a pest gets in and steals all the carrots.
Identity Threat Exposure Detection: An Overview
What is an identity threat exposure?
An identity threat is the risk that a person’s — or organization’s — identifying information may be exposed, stolen, or misused. This may involve identity theft, the theft of credentials, or the sale of private information online. Identity threat exposure (ITE) refers to any vulnerability that leaves a system open to identity theft. This might include:
- Misconfigurations
- Poor password hygiene
- Systems that haven’t been updated
- Older user accounts
- Over-permissioned accounts
What is identity threat detection and response?
Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) is the practice of detecting and responding to threats to user identities, credentials, and access privileges. By identifying and mitigating potential risks and attacks, ITDR reduces the likelihood of attackers gaining unauthorized access to sensitive information or stealing an individual’s identity.
How can identity threat exposure be detected?
Bad actors want to stay undetected in your systems for as long as possible, collecting data and making whatever changes suit them. Fortunately, there are several ways to detect a possible identity threat exposure:
- Implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA) can keep attackers out and highlight suspicious login behaviors.
- Monitoring user activities to detect and block suspicious behaviors.
- Restricting access and deleting older accounts.
- Identifying potential breaches through monitoring threat and identity intelligence.
Why is Identity Threat Exposure Detection Especially Relevant Now?
What’s the impact of an undetected identity threat exposure?
When vulnerabilities aren’t found, criminals are likely to take advantage of them for as long as they can. This means that your data, as well as the data of your customers and partners, may be put at risk because you aren’t aware that this data has been exposed. An undetected vulnerability is also costly; the average cost of a data breach is $4.88 million. Smaller businesses tend to face higher costs from data breaches, and those costs are often passed along to the customer. However, the cost of a breach goes beyond finances; companies also lose the trust of their customers and partners, and may suffer reputational loss in general.
What is identity intelligence?
Identity intelligence falls under the threat intelligence umbrella. While threat intelligence is concerned with any cyber threat, identity intelligence focuses on threats to an organization’s user credentials, such as:
- Leaked credentials that might be sold on the dark web and in prominent threat actor communities
- Compromised passwords
- Infostealer malware logs containing credentials
- Initial access broker (IAB) sales containing compromised credentials
- Hardcoded credentials or API keys in source code stored in GitHub repositories
Integrate the world’s easiest to use and most comprehensive cybercrime database into your security program in 30 minutes.
How can identity intelligence help your organizations find ITEs?
By monitoring identity intelligence, your organization can strengthen cyber defenses, hunt for threats, remediate vulnerabilities, improve compliance, and streamline your cybersecurity processes. Once identity information shows up on the dark web, or you see suspicious activity, your team can trace that leak back to the initial vulnerability. This allows your team to quickly remediate the weakness, and prevent other similar attacks.
How Flare Helps with Identity Threat Exposure Detection
What do you get with Flare’s identity threat exposure solution?
- A proactive cybersecurity stance: Continuous scanning of the clear and dark web, as well as marketplaces for cyber criminals, for data leaks, identifying information and stolen credentials
- Improved endpoint security: Monitoring for malicious activity on public-facing assets
- Data leak prevention: Detection of data breaches and data leaks
- Compliance: Strengthened compliance with data privacy regulations
- Less noise: Immediate, relevant alerts when issues are discovered
How does Flare detect identity threat exposures?
Criminals love a vulnerability that lets them sneak into your system undetected. They love it even more if they can come back over and over again. In fact, your team may not find out that there’s a vulnerability until a lot of important data has already been stolen. Flare helps you find stolen credentials as soon as possible by automating the process of continuously scanning the clear & dark web, as well as prominent threat actor communities. Flare’s threat exposure management (TEM) platform sends your team alerts when it detects your organization’s name, employees’ names, domains, IP, and any other key information so your team can find stolen or leaked passwords and usernames when they appear in places they shouldn’t be.
Why do security teams use Flare to search for ITEs?
There are more than 24 billion stolen credentials circulating on the dark web. Unless you know where to look, finding your own organization’s leaked credentials is almost impossible. Flare’s platform scans automatically and constantly, sending notifications to your team when your data has been exposed, so that you can discover the vulnerability the threat actor used to get into your system in the first place.
Identity Threat Exposure and Flare
The Flare Threat Exposure Management (TEM) solution empowers organizations to proactively detect, prioritize, and mitigate the types of exposures commonly exploited by threat actors. Our platform automatically scans the clear & dark web and prominent threat actor communities 24/7 to discover unknown events, prioritize risks, and deliver actionable intelligence you can use instantly to improve security.
Flare integrates into your security program in 30 minutes and often replaces several SaaS and open source tools. Learn more by signing up for our free trial.
