As organizations expand their reliance on technology, they are finding it more challenging to manage the growing number of machine identities created. Ponemon Institute’s latest report, State of Machine Identity Management, has shed light on the current state of identity and access management and why the zero trust framework is so essential for getting it right.
Crowdstrike Vice President of Zero Trust, Identity, and Data Security Marketing, Kapil Raina, explains that certificates are a validation of identity to a system and it’s important to enforce least privileged access and validate machine identities in real time. Establishing a public key infrastructure is crucial for any enterprise machine identity management strategy and identity segmentation is essential for limiting the damage.
Leading vendors in this area of machine identity management include Akeyless, Amazon Web Services (AWS), AppViewX, CyberArk, CrowdStrike, Delinea, Google, HashiCorp, Keyfactor, Microsoft and Venafi. They are all striving to get their customers the best management tools for applications, containers, virtual machines, IoT and more.
What is evident from the Ponemon report is the shortage of skilled workers and too much change and uncertainty. This is why 53% of the respondents say they lack the staff to properly implement and maintain their PKI system.
To try and resolve this, senior management are stepping up and taking ownership as the importance of identity segmentation is increasing and the need for an enterprise-wide strategy for public key infrastructure is becoming more evident.
CIOs and CISOs need to become more educated on machine identity management and prioritize establishing PKI as central to their identity and access management to stay consistent with the zero-trust security framework.
Vendors such as Akeyless, Amazon Web Services (AWS), AppViewX, CyberArk, CrowdStrike, Delinea, Google, HashiCorp, Keyfactor, Microsoft and Venafi, are helping their customers in this endeavor, by aiming to improve machine lifecycle management tools, in addition to providing new technologies around IoT and cloud services.
It is also essential to have cross-functional teams dedicated to centralizing governance and operational functions, while reducing PKI infrastructure complexity in order to stay consistent with a zero-trust strategy.
CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity technology company that uses AI and machine learning to detect and respond to cyber threats. It provides a cloud-delivered endpoint and cloud workload protection platform that combines prevention, detection, and response. The firm offers endpoint protection, managed threat hunting and response, cloud security, threat intelligence, and vulnerability management. CrowdStrike is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, and serves customers around the world.
Kapil Raina is Crowdstrike’s Vice President of Zero Trust, Identity, and Data Security Marketing. He has nearly two decades of cybersecurity experience across fields such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud security, mobile security, DevOps security, security operations, binary analysis and exploitations. Raina believes that machine identity management is one of the most critical challenges facing CISOs. To help organizations face this challenge, Raina emphasizes that identity and access management platforms need to improve the management of machine lifecycles.
