What Is Identity Security? Features, Threats & Benefits Explained
Attackers no longer break in, they log in. With identities acting as the new perimeter, Identity Security has become essential for organizations that want to withstand the rise in identity-based threats. Everything you need to know about this paradigm shift in IT security, the strategies employed by attackers today and the main components of Identity Security.
What Is Identity Security?
The term Identity Security describes a set of technologies, processes and frameworks designed to protect digital identities from both cyberattacks and insider threats. Identity Security has emerged in response to two important trends:
Network boundaries dissolving through the adoption of cloud apps, hybrid environments and remote work, resulting in the need to protect identities across rapidly shifting IT landscapes.
A rise in cyberattacks on the whole and identity-based attacks in particular, as attackers seek to gain access to sensitive data through compromised identities.
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The goal of Identity Security is to securely authenticate each user, authorize them with the correct privileges, audit permissions to ensure they remain appropriate long-term and monitor access activity to detect suspicious behavior.
To achieve these goals, Identity Security combines capabilities of Identity & Access Management with the newly emerged field of Identity Threat Detection & Response (ITDR).
While Identity & Access Management aims to minimize risk through effective access control based around the Principle of Least Privilege, ITDR gives organizations real-time visibility into IT events – allowing them to detect and respond to identity-based threats as they happen.
With this change in scope, Identity Security marks an important paradigm shift, taking the focus from traditional governance to proactive defense. This new approach was needed to help organizations defend against a growing number of identity-based threats.
A comprehensive approach to Identity Security encompasses different product categories and security disciplines, including:
Identity Providers (IdP): Access Management, multi-factor authentication (MFA), single-sign on (SSO), conditional access
Identity Governance & Administration (IGA): Role-based access, lifecycle management, access requests, access reviews
Data Access Governance (DAG): In-depth permission reporting, object-level visibility, change tracking, audit trails
Identity Threat Detection & Response (ITDR): Event monitoring, threat alerts, behavioral analytics, automated response
Privileged Access Management (PAM): Credential vaults, session monitoring and recording
What Is a Digital Identity & How Is It Different From an Account?
An identity is the virtual representation of a user, service or device in a digital environment. You can think of identities as the meta-layer behind accounts: Each account is linked to an identity, e.g. the person that account belongs to. However, an identity can have multiple accounts associated with it. For example, a person in your organization might have an Active Directory account, an email account, an account in various workplace and cloud apps and so on.
The concept of a meta-identity behind individual accounts is useful in order to maintain visibility and streamline administration, for example by grouping together the different accounts a new employee needs during onboarding, or by knowing which accounts are tied to a specific user when they leave the organization.
What Makes Identity Security Important?
Identity-based attacks are the most frequent form of cyberattack organizations face today, which makes them the number one threat orgs need to guard against. Unlike complex technical exploits or software vulnerabilities, identity-based attacks are often quite simple: phishing emails, malicious attachments, brute-force password guessing.
This makes identity-based methods easy to automate, allowing cybercriminals to run massive campaigns against tens of thousands of accounts. At this huge scale, even a low success rate will eventually result in a compromised account – a digital beachhead that allows attackers to spread across your network.
Combined with more targeted methods such as spear-phising or social engineering, this constant barrage has security teams struggling to keep up. According to researchers at the Identity Security Alliance, 86% of organizations dealt with an identity-related security incident in 2025. And because of the automated nature of most attacks, no organization is too small to become a target.
For attackers, this situation is the perfect storm. IT environments are growing increasingly complex and hard to secure. SaaS-based identity sprawl presents them with a huge attack surface. Traditional, perimeter-based defenses are no longer enough to keep them out. And so, with identities emerging as the new frontline of cybersecurity, the need for Identity Security was born.
What Is the Difference Between Identity Security and IAM?
Identity & Access Management is closely related to Identity Security, and many of its components – such as Identity Governance, Access Management and access reviews – are also present in Identity Security.
The difference is that Identity Security goes beyond Identity & Access Management by offering real-time visibility into user activity and IT events. Taking inspiration from fields such as Extended Detection and Response (XDR) and Security Information & Event Management (SIEM), Identity Security combines Identity Management with in-depth visibility through the inclusion of ITDR, Identity Threat Detection & Response.
What Is the Difference Between Identity Security and Zero Trust?
As a strategy designed to minimize the impact a compromised identity can have on network security, there is a lot of overlap between Zero Trust and Identity Security.
Zero Trust operates on the principle of assuming a breach, requiring strong and continuous authentication before granting any user access. In addition to verifying user identity, device compliance is monitored, access is restricted following a Least Privilege model and the network is micro-segmented to limit lateral movement.
Identity Security likewise enforces secure authentication methods and access governance based on the Principle of Least Privilege. However, with the inclusion of ITDR, real-time monitoring of IT events extends beyond access attempts and device settings to any identity-related activity such as account creation or group changes.
There is significant overlap between Zero Trust and Identity Security in terms of authentication and access governance. However, Zero Trust extends further when it comes to continuous authentication and the micro-segmentation of networks. Meanwhile, Identity Security puts a stronger focus on monitoring events through ITDR.
Common Identity-based Threats
Identity-based attacks can take many forms, ranging from simple and easily automated campaigns to highly targeted and personalized attacks. These are the most common identity-based attack types organizations need to be aware of:
Phishing: Perhaps the most well-known form of attack, phishing emails describe fake scenarios or impersonate trusted senders to convince users to click malicious links or open harmful attachments. Unfortunately, the use of generative AI tools allows attackers to craft very convincing messages and also opens up new channels such as using altered voices to carry out voice phishing (Vishing).
Social Engineering: Similar to phishing, social engineering describes techniques focused on manipulating users by gaining their trust or creating high-pressure situations (such as a direct order from their CEO). While phishing emails are a part of the social engineering playbook, it covers many other techniques including highly personalized attacks that involve detailed research into their target.
Credential Stuffing: Using databases of leaked credentials, attackers quickly rotate through known passwords hoping to gain access. This approach relies on people using common passwords or the same password across multiple accounts. Strong, unique passwords alongside multi-factor authentication and rate limiting for login attempts are an effective defense.
Password Spraying: Similar to credential stuffing, password spraying describes attempts to gain access by guessing common passwords. However, instead of rotating through many passwords for a single account, password spraying targets many accounts using a small number of guesses. This is intended to cast a wider net, while staying clear of rate limiting countermeasures.
Brute-Force Attacks: Other brute-force attack types are also common, such as simply cycling through every alphanumerical character combination until the right one is found. Due to the high number of unsuccessful attempts, this attack pattern is normally easy to spot.
Session Hijacking: By stealing a user’s session cookie, attackers can attempt to take over their logged in session and change their credentials to permanently gain control of their account. This is one of the reasons why critical settings such as password changes should be locked behind an additional security check such as MFA authentication.
Insider Threats: Not all identity-based threats originate outside the organization. Users that feel wronged or dissatisfied may themselves attempt to use their access to sensitive information against the organization. Common examples include sabotaging company systems following employee termination or the theft of business data prior to switching to a competitor. Stringent offboarding procedures as well as event monitoring can help to avoid similar situations.
Components of Identity Security
The goal of Identity Security is to keep digital identities secure from all manner of risks and dangers. This requires a broad security strategy that addresses both immediate threats such as account compromise or privilege abuse and long-term structural risks such as privilege creep and lingering access.
These are the main components of a successful Identity Security Strategy.
Authentication
As an organization’s first line of defense against malicious login attempts, authentication is critical to stopping attackers at the door. Multi-factor authentication adds an important layer of security and can stop many credential-based attacks outright. However, MFA alone is not infallible: Attackers can bypass MFA checks by tricking users into completing the verification request for them (either through spoofed login pages or MFA fatigue attacks).
Organizations can supplement MFA enforcement with conditional access policies that limit sign-ins based on contextual data such as time, location and device type. In order to balance security and productivity, single-sign on (SSO) technologies can reduce login fatigue and get users ready to work faster.
Authorization
Authorization defines what signed-in users are able to do within your IT environment. Each user needs enough access to fulfill their job duties, while avoiding excess privileges – which threaten sensitive data if their account is compromised. This balance can be tricky to achieve, especially in larger organizations where IT teams need to manage hundreds or thousands of users.
Authorization models such as role-based access control streamline the authorization process, allowing organizations to bundle privileges and assign them based on factors such as location, department or seniority level.
Administration
Access needs evolve over time, which makes them challenging to administer. New users need to be onboarded, existing users change departments or leave the organization. Changes like these are commonly referred to as joiner mover leaver processes (JML), which together form the entire user lifecycle.
Managing user lifecycles presents a challenge to IT teams not only due to the number of individual changes they need to make on a day-by-day basis, but also due to the flow of information from HR to IT. When staff changes are not communicated in time, (de)provisioning is delayed or incomplete. Identity Governance & Administration resolves this issue by drawing directly on your HR database and updating user access automatically whenever attributes like department and job are changed.
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Auditing
To ensure that identities remain secure and their level of access remains appropriate, organizations need more than just automated provisioning. They need in-depth visibility into user privileges, as well as the ability to regularly audit them for continued compliance with security objectives.
To incorporate these access reviews into your Identity Security workflow, you need two things:
Up-to-date information showing you who has access to what, down to the object level.
Effective delegation, empowering users who are familiar with a system to review who needs access.
This is one area where many Identity Governance solutions struggle, since their access review features focus on surface-level configurations such as group memberships or app licenses. While these are important attributes to review, a comprehensive approach to access reviews has to go deeper. Effective access auditing combines IGA with in-depth data access governance (DAG).
Did you know: tenfold is the first IGA solution to offer access reviews for shared content in Microsoft 365. Regular reviews and a detailed overview of what your users are sharing allow you to use collaborative features in M365 risk-free.
Alerting (Event Monitoring)
Event monitoring allows organizations to detect identity threats before they have a chance to escalate. Monitoring platforms automatically flag suspicious activity – such as spikes in login activity, unusual access patterns or new accounts being created. These alerts help admins quickly respond to potential threats, or even proactively shut down suspicious behavior through automated processes.
Identity Threat Detection & Response (ITDR) enhances conventional approaches to governance by providing insights into real-time activity. While IGA restricts what each identity is allowed to do, ITDR shows what your users are actually doing. This makes monitoring and alerting key components for a well-rounded Identity Security strategy.
tenfold: Governance & Visibility In One Solution
It’s important to understand that Identity Security is not a product category, but a strategic approach that requires organizations to build their own Identity Security stack. To cover every aspect of Identity Security, organizations need to mix and match different solutions. Often, this involves combining three products: An Identity Provider, an Identity Governance solution and a visibility platform.
Unfortunately, investing in multiple solutions quickly drives up costs – especially when you are trying to set up expensive enterprise-scale products in small to mid-sized organizations. However, there is a way to keep your costs low and your stack small: tenfold combines governance and visibility in just one, easy to deploy solution!
With tenfold, you get:
Comprehensive Identity Governance, from role-based access control to lifecycle management, self-service requests, separation of duties and regular access reviews.
In-depth Data Access Governance with detailed reporting for file server and Microsoft 365 permissions, including shared files across Teams, OneDrive and SharePoint
Event Monitoring, Logging & Analysis collecting and consolidating Windows event data in one central hub, making it easy to search and filter through event information and respond to suspicious activity.
And the best part? With its no-code setup and out-of-the-box support for your applications, tenfold can be rolled out much faster and easier than comparable solutions. By reducing setup times and operational effort, tenfold significantly decreases your total cost of ownership!
To learn more about our revolutionary, no-code IGA platform, book a personal demo of our solution today!