Organisations need to make the move to holistic visibility of identities across all their environments .
Strengthening an organisation ’ s security posture by providing more secure remote access should be a priority for many organisations in 2024 .
editor ’ s question
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uring 2023 , the
D biggest lesson I learned was the continued importance of securely managing remote access of IT and OT ( Operational Technology ) environments . This quickly became a significant issue for many organisations at the beginning of the pandemic shutdowns and – unfortunately – remains so today .
The key security challenge caused by the increase in remote access , by both employees and third parties , is that it continues to be a key entry point for many cybersecurity breaches . Although the threat landscape is constantly evolving , this is something that appears to be an ongoing challenge for many CISOs and their security teams . Throughout the past year , it ’ s been frustrating to see the number of cybersecurity breaches initiated through this attack vector continue to grow . It appears that – despite significant industry and media attention – many business leaders have still not got the message .
Changes to the regulatory environment also appear to not be having as much impact as they should . Recently , the Australian Government ’ s Cyber and Infrastructure Security Centre highlighted the significance of this attack vector to businesses in its annual risk review . Hopefully , this will help to spur action on this front during 2024 .
The recent cyberattacks that targeted Okta identity infrastructure and Microsoft Active Directory instances served to highlight weaknesses in identity security and controls . Many organisations are continuing to struggle with achieving the visibility needed
Organisations need to make the move to holistic visibility of identities across all their environments .
to get a clear understanding of their identity security posture .
While there are often logs fed into an SIEM or tools tracking on-premise Active Directory , the data remains siloed . In 2024 and beyond , organisations need to make the move to holistic visibility of identities across all their environments , including on-premise , SaaS platforms and multiple cloud services . By doing so they will be able to effectively detect
SCOTT HESFORD , DIRECTOR SOLUTIONS ENGINEERING , APAC AND JAPAN , BEYONDTRUST and respond to the growing range of sophisticated cyberthreats . This can be achieved by deploying tools that harness advanced analytics and intelligence capabilities . These tools , in turn , can deliver real-time visualisation of threats , indicate potential attack paths and provide actionable insights .
For security teams , these tools create an intelligence layer that delivers a new level of identity and access security . Deployed correctly , the tools can give security teams a unified view of identities , accounts , cloud entitlements and privileged access rights across an organisation ’ s entire IT infrastructure .
Strengthening an organisation ’ s security posture by providing more secure remote access should be a priority for many organisations in 2024 . Likewise , identifying threats , risks and attacks on common identity-related vectors will not only reduce the threat surface but allow a more nimble and timely response to attacks . u
Strengthening an organisation ’ s security posture by providing more secure remote access should be a priority for many organisations in 2024 .
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