Identity and Access Management (IAM)
Identity & Access Management (IAM), in the context of cybersecurity, is the framework of policies and technologies used to manage digital identities (of users, applications, and devices) and control their access to resources. IAM is the primary security control layer, often referred to as the "new perimeter," because it protects against the leading cause of breaches: compromised or abused credentials.
The core principle of IAM is the Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP), ensuring every identity only has the minimum level of access necessary to perform its job.
IAM Platforms
IAM platforms are the centralized systems that manage the entire identity lifecycle, from provisioning to de-provisioning, across various applications and cloud environments.
Examples: Centralized directories (e.g., Active Directory, Azure AD, LDAP), Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) solutions, and Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) tools.
Cybersecurity Focus:
Centralization and Governance. The focus is on creating a single, authoritative source of truth for identities and ensuring that access rights are continuously reviewed, compliant, and properly removed when no longer needed (de-provisioning).
Specific Cybersecurity Risks:
Identity Sprawl (Shadow IT): Identities existing outside the central IAM platform (e.g., a local database account or a rogue cloud service account), which lack centralized security controls and oversight.
Stale/Orphaned Accounts: User accounts that remain active after an employee leaves the company or a project ends. These accounts often retain high privileges and are prime targets for attackers.
Privilege Creep: Accounts accumulating more permissions over time than they require. This is a violation of the Principle of Least Privilege and leads to significant lateral movement risk if the account is compromised.
Misconfigured Federation: Flaws in how the central IAM platform connects (federates) identity with external applications (e.g., third-party SaaS), allowing an attacker to bypass authentication in one service and gain access to others.
Authentication & MFA Tools
This category includes the mechanisms and technologies that verify an identity's claim before granting access, ensuring that the user is who they claim to be.
Examples: Single Sign-On (SSO) protocols (SAML, OAuth, OIDC), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) methods (hardware tokens, biometrics, software authenticators), and Passwordless technologies.
Cybersecurity Focus:
Validation and Verification. The focus is on employing strong, layered authentication methods to thwart simple credential theft (passwords) and prevent unauthorized access.
Specific Cybersecurity Risks:
Weak Authentication Factors: Relying solely on passwords, which are easily phished, guessed, or stolen from data breaches.
MFA Bypass Techniques: Attackers use sophisticated methods (such as SIM swapping, session hijacking, or automated MFA "push bombing") to circumvent the second factor of authentication, defeating the purpose of the control.
SSO Vulnerabilities: Exploiting poor configuration of the central SSO mechanism (e.g., weak encryption, insecure session management) to access all integrated applications with a single stolen token.
Credential Stuffing: Automated attacks that use lists of usernames and passwords stolen from other breaches to try to gain access to an organization's systems via its public login portals.
ThreatNG provides crucial external visibility to secure Identity & Access Management (IAM) by continuously identifying public exposures that directly compromise user identity, bypass authentication tools, and violate the Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP). It focuses on finding leaked credentials, exposed login portals, and vulnerable assets that an attacker can use to gain initial access to IAM-governed systems.
ThreatNG’s External Discovery and Continuous Monitoring
ThreatNG performs purely external unauthenticated discovery to map the public-facing components of the IAM ecosystem, such as login portals and cloud interfaces, which are prime targets for compromise.
Mobile App Discovery and Content Analysis: This is key for addressing risks related to Authentication & MFA Tools. ThreatNG finds and analyzes mobile applications associated with the organization.
Example: ThreatNG discovers a legacy internal application mobile app that contains a hard-coded API key or a secret that, if compromised, allows an attacker to bypass the SSO or MFA challenge and gain access to federated resources, directly compromising the Validation and Verification layer.
Cloud and SaaS Exposure: This is vital for securing IAM Platforms that rely on cloud directories. ThreatNG identifies exposed services on major CSPs and SaaS platforms, including those that might be Identity Sprawl assets.
Continuous Monitoring: ThreatNG provides constant monitoring of all public login pages and assets. Suppose an administrative portal for the central IAM platform is accidentally exposed or misconfigured. In that case, ThreatNG detects the change immediately, preventing the sustained exposure that could lead to an administrator account compromise.
External Assessment Capabilities
ThreatNG’s External Assessment assigns scores that quantify the external risk of identity compromise, directly mapping to IAM threats.
Data Leak Susceptibility: This is the most critical score for IAM, directly reflecting the risk of stolen identities. It is derived from Cloud and SaaS Exposure and Dark Web Presence.
Example: A high score flags that administrative credentials for the organization's IAM Platforms (e.g., the Azure AD console or an Identity Governance system) have been found in DarCache Rupture (Compromised Credentials). This is the immediate precursor to a large-scale breach resulting from Stale/Orphaned Accounts being exploited.
Web Application Hijack Susceptibility: This assesses the security of public-facing authentication pages.
Example: The assessment detects a critical vulnerability (like an old JavaScript library with a known XSS flaw) on the external SSO login page. An attacker could exploit this to steal session tokens, facilitating SSO Vulnerabilities and MFA Bypass techniques.
Breach & Ransomware Susceptibility: This score addresses threats to the infrastructure hosting IAM components.
Example: ThreatNG identifies an exposed, unpatched database port on a server running a legacy IAM Platform (like an LDAP server). This open entry point provides a clear path for attackers to gain initial access and target the identity data itself.
Investigation Modules and Technology Identification
ThreatNG’s Investigation Modules provide the granular evidence needed to locate and fix specific security flaws in the identity and authentication environment.
Technology Identification (Domain and Subdomain Intelligence): This identifies the external presence of specific IAM technologies.
Example: ThreatNG can identify the external presence and versions of Single Sign-On (SSO) services (e.g., Okta, Ping Identity) or Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) portals. This allows the security team to correlate these public assets with vulnerabilities in the DarCache Vulnerability repository, prioritizing patches for key access control systems.
Search Engine Exploitation: This module searches for inadvertently indexed data that could compromise access.
Example: The module might find that a search engine has indexed a folder containing temporary log files or configuration data for an Authentication & MFA Tool setup, revealing internal IP ranges or configuration endpoints that an attacker can use to launch a more targeted MFA Bypass attack (e.g., targeting a specific server used for token generation).
Archived Web Pages: This feature helps secure legacy or forgotten authentication portals.
Example: ThreatNG discovers an archived login page for a legacy internal application that still uses weak, single-factor authentication and is still connected to the production network. This asset represents an unmonitored point of entry, creating a critical risk of Credential Stuffing.
Intelligence Repositories (DarCache)
The Intelligence Repositories inject crucial real-world threat context regarding credential compromise, which is the most potent threat to IAM.
DarCache Rupture (Compromised Credentials): This directly addresses the most considerable IAM risk. It alerts the organization if Administrative Credentials for the IAM Platform or SSO System are found on the Dark Web. This finding enables the security team to take immediate action to prevent Account Takeover and subsequent Privilege Creep.
DarCache Vulnerability (NVD, EPSS, KEV, eXploit): This ensures the organization patches the most critical security flaws in their public-facing IAM assets.
Example: If a specific component in the login flow is found to have a vulnerability listed on the KEV (Known Exploited Vulnerabilities) list in DarCache, the fix is prioritized to prevent exploitation that leads to an SSO Vulnerability or an MFA Bypass.
Complementary Solutions
ThreatNG's external validation and intelligence create powerful synergies when combined with internal IAM security tools:
Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) / CIEM Synergies: IGA/CIEM tools manage permissions internally. ThreatNG provides the external trigger. When ThreatNG identifies that an account's credentials have been leaked (via DarCache Rupture), this intelligence is used to trigger an immediate access review in the IGA system for that specific user. This helps identify and rectify any accumulated Privilege Creep before the compromised account is exploited.
SIEM/SOAR Synergies: When ThreatNG detects a high-fidelity event, such as an exposed SSO configuration file or a compromised credential, this intelligence is used to trigger an automated response in a SOAR system. The workflow can automatically lock the affected user's account, force a password rotation, and raise the authentication monitoring level for all associated sessions, mitigating the risk of a mass Credential Stuffing or MFA Bypass attack.
Passwordless and MFA Tools: ThreatNG’s continuous assessment of public login portals for vulnerabilities (Web Application Hijack Susceptibility) informs the team of which Authentication & MFA Tools are most at risk of being bypassed, allowing them to prioritize deployment of more resilient authentication methods (e.g., phishing-resistant hardware keys) to replace vulnerable ones.
