1. Mandate Least Privilege and Routine Audits

Just one end-user with weak authentication protocols and elevated privileges can serve as an entry point for threat actors seeking to gain access to your IT system. Mitigate the threat of a successful identity compromise by adopting least privilege as a foundational principle to your identity security strategy. This entails allocating only the necessary permissions to end-users while regularly conducting audits of end-users, roles, and their associated permissions.

2. Enforce Single-Sign-On (SSO) and Multi-Factor
Authentication (MFA)

This may seem like a basic one, but many organizations adopt SSO and MFA for SaaS apps unevenly. It’s essential to ensure SSO and MFA adoption uniformity across the organization as there may be some apps, end-user, and guest user accounts that lack SSO and MFA enforcement. This issue becomes even more crucial as more SaaS apps are adopted across the organization, often without direct oversight of the IT or cybersecurity team. Key tip: Use an authentication application rather than a SMS-based authentication method to prevent the risk of SIM hijacking.

3. Configure Strong Password Policies

While nobody wishes to anticipate the worst, lay on the side of caution and assume that end-users’ login credentials may at some point be compromised. Enforce strong password policies and utilize a password manager to secure end-users’ passwords.

4. Utilize Biometric Authentication

Use biometric authentication methods such as fingerprint or facial recognition as an additional authentication layer where possible. Biometric authentication is difficult to spoof and provides a strong level of identity verification reducing the chances of threat actors compromising identity security.

5. Implement Behavioral-based and Continuous Authentication

Implement behavioral-based, continuous, or adaptive authentication to monitor user behavior during sessions to detect anomalies. If unusual behavior is detected, such as random logins from a new device or location, the system can prompt for additional verification.

6. Conduct Continuous Monitoring

To ensure you’re securing all your bases, continuous monitoring over your SaaS environment and other devices is essential. Without continuous monitoring, anomalous identity-related activity can go undetected for weeks or even months, leaving your SaaS estate vulnerable to attacks.

7. Implement Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR)

ITDR solutions are becoming essential in the cybersecurity stack. These solutions detect and alert on account compromise and insider threats among other types of anomalous activity in your SaaS apps and devices.

8. Promote Continuous Education and Awareness

Create a culture of continuous end-user cybersecurity education where employees know the importance of identity verification and cybersecurity best practices to reduce employees from falling victim to social engineering scams. Engaging and gamified security awareness training has become an essential element to help mitigate the threat of social engineering campaigns.