Valentine’s Day is nearly upon us, and love is in the air. Why not apply the theme of ‘love’ to Delinea, and have a little fun while I share a bit about new capabilities that we are introducing?
The Delinea team has been hard at work to push forward key innovations in identity security (which we are announcing this week!), so that your security posture doesn’t continue to keep you up at night. You can stop being Sleepless in Seattle (or San Francisco, NYC, London, or Dubai – or wherever you are!) and rest easy knowing these new innovations will help your secure more parts of your organization and gain better visibility – all while reducing friction and making security EASIER for your teams to embrace.
Identity security: Share the love with your business users
Identity security is not just about admins anymore. When most customers think about securing access to business accounts, they focus on administrators. This is understandable, since admins to have unique access and are an easier community to reach and control. However, admins are just one piece of the puzzle. Bad actors are constantly scanning for the weakest link—and that's often your harried business users.
Consider your accounting team, your human resources team, or even your marketing team. These teams have access to applications containing financial information, Personally Identifiable Information (PII), and all sorts of customer data. On the surface, these roles may not scream "critical access," but they are the darlings of phishing attempts and potential privilege creep.
Every user creates passwords to unlock access to business accounts, and over time, if not monitored closely, they can accumulate unnecessary permissions. When they change roles or leave the organization, their access may not be revoked in a timely fashion, and poor offboarding results in vulnerable orphaned accounts.
To protect your organization, you need to know who has access, what they are authorized to do, when, and why. That requires complete visibility and centralized governance across every identity—admins, business users, contractors, and anyone else with access.
Love is blind: Identity security should not be
While love may be blind, it’s critically important for identity security programs to have visibility across identities. To eliminate blind spots and overprivileged users, you need centralized visibility. Visibility isn't just about knowing who's accessing what; it's also about finding the problems and fixing them—spotting anomalies, revoking access, and eliminating orphaned accounts automatically.
Without unified oversight, IT teams are overwhelmed with manual tasks that demand significant time and resources, leaving room for human error and threats to go unchecked.
For instance, if a marketing user that typically works Monday through Friday suddenly accesses customer data on a Saturday (date night!), and asks for elevated privileges, that's an anomaly. By knowing what 'normal' digital behavior looks like for that specific user and with centralized oversight, additional security checks – such as an MFA prompt – can trigger without disrupting the workflow, reducing the risk of a potential breach.
Why this should capture your heart:
- Proactive security: Empowers you to identify and address threats before they escalate.
- Reduced friction: Frees legitimate users to continue working, while bad actors are stopped in their tracks.
- Increased efficiency: Access is provisioned automatically, eliminating manual tasks.
Make security irresistible (and invisible) to your users
Here's the reality: If security measures are complex or don't fit into users' workflows, they won't adopt them. If it takes them longer to do their jobs, they won't adopt them. In either case, the relationship will be over. Leaders often face resistance because traditional security tools feel like roadblocks. Technology that integrates security into existing workflows for every user removes the roadblocks and is a ‘keeper’.
For example:
- Business user scenario: A sales rep at an event needs to access customer data for an impromptu meeting. Instead of dragging out their laptop and fumbling with a complex credentials vault or, worse, bypassing security for speed, they can access their CRM on any device with secure credentials automatically injected with one click. They quickly respond to client needs while your security team maintains an audit trail.
- Admin scenario: While at a conference, an admin receives an alert about unusual activity in their system. Instead of heading back to the office and wasting valuable time, they securely leverage an administrator's mobile app to assess the issue and communicate in real time, avoiding any disruption to the business.
- Leadership scenario: An accounts payable clerk got promoted and now manages a team. Their job title changes to 'Finance Manager' in your HR system, which triggers a change to remove AP clerk access and provision manager access automatically. They can now only approve journal entries, not create them. Fraud risk is avoided with automated permissions adjusted based on role.
Security doesn't have to disrupt productivity. In fact, it should enhance it.
What’s not to love?
Don’t get cold feet: Move beyond partial security
Securing only administrative users is an outdated and high-risk strategy.
Bad actors exploit this narrow focus, targeting overlooked and often unmanaged identities. To reduce risk, every identity must be treated as a potential entry point. As such, their access and permissions should be monitored and managed to ensure comprehensive oversight without causing friction.
With a comprehensive identity security strategy for all users, you can:
- Ensure consistent management and centralized control.
- Build baselines for digital behavior to detect and act on anomalies in near real-time.
- Govern access and enforce least privilege for all users throughout their lifecycle automatically.
- Implement workflows that work how users work so they barely notice security controls.
- Maximize your current technology and leverage integrations for centralized, unified control and oversight.
Your teams teams are measured not only by the solutions they implement, but also by the culture of security that’s created – and how users (and admins) view security. You have an exciting opportunity to make security work seamlessly in the background for every user, creating an environment where your people and your data are protected.
If you are ready to take the next steps and embrace how Delinea can help you level up your identity security game – and win hearts and minds across your organization – register here to join our webinar at 11am EST on February 27, 2025, to learn more!