Large-scale breaches, such as the recent Snowflake incident, highlight the importance of a strong identity security posture. In light of the recent Snowflake incident (and subsequent controls implemented by Snowflake in response), it is worthwhile to take a step back and review the critical steps that one should take to ensure your organization is not left vulnerable to a breach.
1. Ensure Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is enabled, and no bypass is possible.
Zilla recommends enabling MFA across all business-critical applications, including systems with customer data, finance data, and audit-susceptible systems. For the strongest security, enable MFA wherever it is configurable. This step is a fundamental prerequisite for a strong Identity Security Posture.
2. Maintain admin credentials in a secure password manager.
While SSO is a best practice, most organizations do not pay close attention to admin credentials that are intended for “break glass” purposes. Therefore, it’s crucial to also maintain admin credentials in a secure password management system to ensure continuity and control of privileged access.
3. Conduct a service account review.
Improperly managed service accounts pose a significant vulnerability threat as organizations have increasing numbers of users, apps, and shared service accounts. It is important to conduct regular reviews of these accounts to validate their necessity and integrity. For example, experimental projects that were done 2 years ago often continue to have active service accounts in the environment that can be exploited.
Even by doing just these three things — enabling MFA, maintaining break glass admin credentials in a secure password manager, and conducting a service account review — your security posture will improve tremendously. The high-profile Snowflake incident is a good opportunity for security teams to get buy-in from internal stakeholders to implement these controls. Furthermore, these steps are simple and will not pose an undue burden on your application owners.
The Zilla security module makes it easy for organizations to implement these critical controls of identity security posture and manage identity security throughout the lifecycle of users and apps. The security module detects when these misconfigurations happen, enabling security teams to be proactive.
Schedule a demo to see how Zilla can help you strengthen and maintain a strong identity security posture.
