This includes safeguarding identity-related mechanisms like authentication, authorization policies, identity providers (IdPs), session management, and activity monitoring. These elements are essential to maintaining digital trust and form the basis for how users interact with systems and data.
As traditional security perimeters have exploded, identity has become the new perimeter, and adversaries know it’s often the most direct path to critical systems and data. As such, attackers increasingly target identity itself, exploiting weaknesses in authentication flows, abusing misconfigured access permissions, or hijacking active sessions.
Older security models trusted users once they were inside the perimeter. They failed to account for attackers who now focus on the login process itself. Legacy systems often feature limited verification and prioritize convenience over security - problems that modern Zero Trust and adaptive access frameworks are designed to address. [OG1]
Why It’s Important
Identities are Under Attack
Digital identities - workforce, customer, or partner - have become prime targets for attackers. They are often seen as the fastest path to steal data, disrupt operations, or further a broader agenda.
The 2025 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report found that nearly 40% of breaches involved suspicious logins with multi-factor authentication (MFA) bypasses. Identity-related incidents increasingly occur at multiple stages of the cyber kill chain, with identities functioning as both a “key to the world” and a single point of failure.
These challenges are amplified by shifting IT realities: hybrid work, cloud sprawl, and an explosion of unmanaged APIs. Legacy controls and fragmented monitoring make it harder to detect and respond to identity-based threats in time.
Here’s how some of the most common threats could take hold:
Phishing / MFA Fatigue
Traditional phishing attacks are being supplemented by more advanced methods like prompt bombing, leading to MFA fatigue. An adversary will do whatever it takes to break MFA. That’s why authentication strategies should be enhanced with phishing-resistant MFA and context-aware conditional access policies that apply granular controls to high-risk data and actions.
Token / Session Theft
Long-lived, unmonitored tokens with no risk evaluation allow attackers to hijack sessions undetected. Poor token hygiene can also expose secrets. Examples include overly long lifetimes, lack of rotation or revocation, unscoped or over-privileged reuse across sessions or apps, and missing telemetry.
These gaps enable session hijacking and persistent unauthorized access that may bypass MFA and conditional access entirely. That’s why it’s important to consider revocation as much as granting access. Identity and Access Management (IAM) teams should plan for revocation from the start—when modeling identity flows, defining use cases, and mapping access lifecycles.
Identity protection technologies ensure revocation is automated based upon threat detection from shared signals, responding to breaches faster than attackers can move.
Gaps in Visibility
Incomplete or siloed log management obscures visibility into identity attacks, delaying detection and response. The rapid increase of APIs (thanks to Artificial Intelligence) necessitates automating identity management. Centralized, correlated logs are also critical for spotting anomalies across sessions, tokens, and apps.
Credential Theft
Passwords without MFA—especially on legacy systems or service accounts—remain a high risk for many organizations[GO2] [AA3] . The Thales 2025 Data Threat Report indicates that failure to use MFA for privileged users was identified as the root cause for 13% of reported data breaches. Powered by identity theft, attackers are now less purveyors of malware (including ransomware) and more akin to credential brokers and brute force attacks. Identity-based cyberattacks enable attackers to gain access (literally to log in) and stay hidden for a long time until they achieve their goals[GO4] .
These risks aren’t merely hypothetical. 2020’s Microsoft Exchange Server attacks involved cybercriminals exploiting vulnerabilities to steal credentials and using them to access systems as legitimate users. With no MFA in place, attackers moved laterally and remained undetected – a clear example of how identity-based attacks now outpace traditional malware in both stealth and impact. And this is not the only example; the more recent incidents of Change Healthcare, Snowflake and the series of Scattered Spider operations demonstrate that attackers exploit broken authentication to hide in the shadows of critical systems until they can launch their malicious payload.
Misconfigurations can create a false sense of security when unknown gaps in MFA coverage exist, and chances are that someone, somewhere, has compromised your users.
Your access control should be more policy-driven than centered on credentials, which also are a longstanding point of friction for end users. Proactive defenders are less reliant on incident response.
OAuth Abuse
OAuth was created to provide safer authorization. Its weaponization is unfortunate but dangerous, with unchecked or excessive API requests exposing identity systems to abuse. Lack of app governance lets users grant excessive access to third-party apps, or rogue APIs, creating attack surfaces that bad actors can exploit.
Many organizations have a backlog of user-consented apps that haven’t been evaluated and often predate administrative consent workflows.
Your users could inadvertently consent to authorizing broad access to resources. Attackers can devote endless hours to reconnaissance and planning; they only have to be right once.
Core Benefits of Identity Security
You can protect your identity layer by enforcing phishing-resistant MFA everywhere, via options like passkeys, FIDO2 hardware keys, or certificate-based authentication. However, these controls should not come at the expense of user experience. Applying adaptive policies based on the authentication context, limiting token lifetimes, fingerprinting devices, and restricting access to sensitive apps produces layered defenses that reduce attack surface area without adding friction to user access.
Governance should be a priority. Without a canonical identity model that maps each user to a single, consistent identity across all systems, users often accumulate redundant accounts across systems with each one introducing risk and complicating oversight. Consolidating identities and automating lifecycle management reduces the attack surface, enhances accountability, and strengthens policy enforcement. Application owners should also own the risks and costs if controls are bypassed.
The framework and policies you create will enable the implementation and maintenance of a Zero-Trust security model where identity is the perimeter and your posture is built on the assumption that a breach can happen at any time. It helps [GO5] contain risk—even if credentials or your IdP are compromised. Securing the identity layer is central to every IAM team’s mission and essential to overall security hygiene.
How It Works
Identity security means enforcing MFA everywhere, detecting risk in real-time, securing tokens, and limiting what’s exposed—even if your IdP is compromised.
It’s not one control, but layers of security aligned with Zero Trust: verify explicitly, assume breach, and limit how far an attacker can move once inside.
Technologies involved include phishing-resistant MFA (like FIDO2), adaptive policies based on user contexts like location, device signals, token management, and fine-grained access controls for critical resources and sensitive data. The industry is also making progress on standard frameworks to share signals among security applications, creating a new “trusted” zone between authentication and authorization. Your ultimate objective should be to trust an identity … but not too much.
These capabilities form the foundation, but protection doesn’t end at the point of access.
Identity protection also includes app governance, log management, and identity monitoring to detect and respond to threats in motion.
Industry Spotlight: Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI)
BFSI orgs are high-value targets because of the sensitivity of the data they handle and their reliance on always-available systems. Fortunately, the BFSI industry understands this with more than half of bankers naming customer identity verification as their top infosec priority.
A single identity breach can result in regulatory fines, reputational loss, and cascading operational failures across business units. Financial firms now spend an average of $6.08 million per breach, exceeding the global average due to steep regulatory fines, business disruption, and remediation costs… continuity only returns afterthe breach fallout.
BFSI leaders are accelerating Zero Trust adoption, with identity protection topping IAM investment priorities. Driven by both compliance pressures and growing insider risk, these orgs are shifting from static IAM models to more adaptive identity security.
What to Look for in an Identity Security Solution
Look for a solution that supports contextual access control, integrates with existing tools, and doesn’t rely on static policies. Identity security isn’t just about enforcement—it’s about flexibility, insight, and fast response when risk signals change.
The best approach assumes compromise is inevitable and focuses on minimizing the impact of your known risks. It should layer risk signals, adapt in real time, and require no tradeoff between security and usability. Your organization shouldn’t have to choose between protecting access and enabling it. It can have both when it’s done right.
Conclusion
Identity security isn’t optional—it’s foundational to business operations. You’ll be off to a good start by layering context-aware controls and assuming breach to reduce security risk, protect your users, and keep your organization resilient and protected from identity-based threats.[OG6]