Shadow Identity

Shadow Identity refers to the accumulation of unauthorized, unmanaged, or invisible user accounts and credentials created by employees to access third-party applications, cloud services, and digital platforms. It is the identity-specific component of Shadow IT.

In a corporate cybersecurity context, a Shadow Identity exists whenever an employee uses their work email or a personal email to create an account on a service (such as a PDF converter, a project management tool, or a file-sharing site) without the knowledge, approval, or governance of the IT and Security departments. These identities exist outside the organization's centralized Identity and Access Management (IAM) systems.

The Relationship Between Shadow IT and Shadow Identity

While the terms are often used interchangeably, there is a distinct difference in focus:

• Shadow IT focuses on the application or infrastructure (e.g., an unauthorized Dropbox instance or an AWS server).

• Shadow Identity focuses on the credentials and user profiles (e.g., the username and password used to access that Dropbox).

As organizations move toward SaaS-first environments, the perimeter has shifted from the network to the identity. Consequently, Shadow Identity has become a primary vector for data leakage and unauthorized access.

How Shadow Identities Are Created

Shadow identities proliferate through common, often well-intentioned, employee behaviors aimed at increasing productivity.

Product-Led Growth (PLG) Adoption

Modern software vendors make it easy for individual users to sign up for "free tiers" or trials without going through a corporate procurement process. An employee creates an account to solve an immediate problem, establishing a shadow identity.

Social Logins and SSO Misuse

Employees often use "Sign in with Google" or "Sign in with LinkedIn" buttons on third-party sites using their corporate credentials. This authorizes an external application to act on behalf of the user, often granting it permission to read emails or access contacts, creating a persistent and unmonitored connection.

BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) Blur

When employees use personal devices for work, they often create accounts on mobile apps that blend personal and professional data. If they use a corporate password for a personal app, that identity becomes a risk factor.

Critical Security Risks of Shadow Identity

The existence of unmanaged identities introduces several high-severity risks to an organization.

The Offboarding Gap (Orphaned Accounts)

When an employee leaves the company, IT revokes their access to Active Directory and sanctioned apps (like Salesforce or Office 365). However, IT cannot revoke access to shadow identities they do not know exist. The former employee retains access to the data stored in those third-party apps indefinitely.

Credential Reuse and Stuffing

Employees frequently reuse their corporate Active Directory password when creating accounts for low-security shadow apps. If that third-party app suffers a data breach, attackers can harvest the credentials and use them to breach the corporate network (Credential Stuffing).

Lack of Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

Sanctioned corporate accounts are usually protected by MFA. Shadow identities typically rely on single-factor authentication (username and password only), making them easy targets for takeover.

Compliance and Data Sovereignty Violations

Shadow identities often hold sensitive corporate data (PII, IP, or financial records) in environments that are not audited for compliance. This puts the organization in violation of regulations like GDPR, CCPA, or HIPAA, as the data location is unknown.

Mitigating Shadow Identity Risk

Organizations can reduce the prevalence of shadow identities through a combination of technology and policy.

• Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB): These tools monitor network traffic to identify unauthorized cloud applications being accessed by employees.

• SSO Enforcement: Mandating that all applications must support Single Sign-On (SSO) ensures that if an employee leaves, their access to all tools is cut simultaneously.

• Password Managers: providing enterprise-grade password managers discourages credential reuse and gives IT some visibility into the number of external accounts being created.

• Browser Extensions: deploying security extensions that detect when a user is entering a corporate password into a non-corporate domain.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Shadow Identity the same as a Ghost User? No. A "Ghost User" typically refers to an inactive account that remains in a system after a user has left (due to an administrative failure). A "Shadow Identity" is an active account that IT never knew existed.

Why is Shadow Identity considered a supply chain risk? Because the third-party vendors hosting the shadow identity are part of your digital supply chain. If a small, unvetted vendor is breached, and your employees have shadow accounts there, your organization inherits that risk.

Can Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) tools fix this? IGA tools manage known identities. They cannot govern what they cannot see. To fix Shadow Identity, organizations first need discovery tools (such as CASB or EASM) to identify the accounts before IGA tools can manage them.

What is the "Zombie Account" risk? This refers to shadow identities that the employee has abandoned but remains active on the provider's side. These dormant accounts often lie undetected for years until they are compromised and used as pivot points in an attack.

Uncovering Shadow Identity with ThreatNG

ThreatNG addresses the challenge of Shadow Identity by mapping the external digital footprint where unauthorized and unmanaged accounts reside. By discovering infrastructure, code repositories, and public profiles created by employees outside corporate governance, ThreatNG enables security teams to identify, assess, and remediate the risks associated with these invisible identities.

External Discovery of Unmanaged Digital Assets

ThreatNG performs purely external, unauthenticated discovery to locate the "shadow infrastructure" that typically hosts Shadow Identities. Unlike internal scanners that rely on known inventory, ThreatNG scans the internet to find what the organization doesn't know about.

• Identifying Shadow Cloud Environments: The solution discovers subdomains and cloud storage buckets (e.g., on AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) that employees have spun up for ad-hoc projects. These environments are often created using personal email accounts or unmanaged corporate credentials, effectively functioning as Shadow Identities with administrative privileges over company data.

• Detecting Third-Party SaaS Usage: By analyzing DNS records and subdomain connections, ThreatNG identifies "dangling" connections to third-party providers (like Heroku, Shopify, or Trello). This reveals where employees have established accounts to host corporate content without IT oversight.

External Assessment of Identity Vulnerabilities

Once a potential Shadow Identity footprint is discovered, ThreatNG performs deep assessments to quantify the risk. These assessments determine whether the unmanaged identity exposes the organization to a takeover or data leakage.

Web Application Hijack Susceptibility This assessment evaluates the security posture of the shadow assets. ThreatNG assigns a security rating (A-F) based on the presence of critical headers.

• Example: An employee creates a shadow instance of a project management tool on a subdomain like team-project.company.com. ThreatNG scans this page and identifies it is missing Content-Security-Policy (CSP) and X-Frame-Options. This "F" rating indicates that the Shadow Identity used to administer this page is vulnerable to Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) and Clickjacking, allowing attackers to steal the session cookies and take over the account.

Subdomain Takeover Susceptibility Shadow Identities often abandon projects when they are no longer needed, leaving the infrastructure vulnerable.

• Example: A marketing employee creates a campaign page using a personal account on a third-party service, pointing a corporate CNAME to it. When the campaign ends, they delete the account but forget the DNS record. ThreatNG identifies this "dangling DNS" and flags it for Subdomain Takeover. This prevents attackers from claiming the subdomain and impersonating the Shadow Identity to launch phishing attacks.

Non-Human Identity (NHI) Exposure Shadow Identities are not always human; they are often scripts or bots created by developers.

• Example: Through its Sensitive Code Exposure assessment, ThreatNG scans public code repositories for API keys and secrets. It might find that a developer's personal GitHub account (a Shadow Identity) contains a hardcoded AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID that grants access to the corporate production environment. This immediately exposes the risk posed by this unmanaged identity.

BEC & Phishing Susceptibility ThreatNG analyzes email security configurations to see if Shadow Identities can be easily spoofed.

• Example: If a shadow domain set up by a department lacks proper DMARC or SPF records, ThreatNG highlights that attackers can easily send emails purporting to be from that domain, exploiting the trust associated with the Shadow Identity.

Investigation Modules for Identity Tracing

ThreatNG utilizes specialized investigation modules to pivot from infrastructure findings to specific identity risks.

Username Exposure Module This module is critical for validating the existence of Shadow Identities across the web.

• Example: Security teams can input standard corporate username formats (e.g., jsmith, john.smith) into the module. ThreatNG scans hundreds of sites—from developer forums to paste sites—to see if these handles are registered. Finding a corporate handle on a site like Pastebin or a hacking forum suggests a Shadow Identity is being used for potentially risky behavior.

Social Media and Reddit Discovery These modules manage the "Narrative Risk" associated with unmanaged identities.

• Example: The Reddit Discovery module monitors for discussions involving company projects. It might detect a user (Shadow Identity) asking for technical help with proprietary internal software on a public subreddit, inadvertently leaking sensitive architectural details.

Domain Intelligence & Permutations This module identifies external threats targeting the organization's identity namespace.

• Example: ThreatNG checks for typosquatted domains that mimic the naming conventions of shadow projects (e.g., company-dev-portal.com). This alerts the team that attackers may be aware of the Shadow Identity infrastructure and are setting up traps to harvest credentials.

Intelligence Repositories (DarCache)

ThreatNG enriches Shadow Identity findings by cross-referencing them with DarCache, its proprietary threat intelligence repository.

• Compromised Credential Correlation: When a Shadow Identity (username or email) is discovered, ThreatNG checks DarCache Rupture to see if it appears in known data breaches. If an employee uses a work email for an unmanaged Adobe or Canva account that has been breached, ThreatNG links those compromises back to the corporate risk profile.

• Dark Web Monitoring: DarCache Dark Web scans hidden services for mentions of the specific Shadow Identity handles, providing early warning if these unmanaged credentials are being sold or traded by access brokers.

Continuous Monitoring and Reporting

Because Shadow Identities are created spontaneously, point-in-time assessments are insufficient.

• Continuous Surveillance: ThreatNG monitors the attack surface 24/7. It triggers alerts when new subdomains appear or when a previously unknown code repository referencing the company is created.

• Contextual Reporting: Reports do not just list assets; they contextualize the risk. A report might state: "Unmanaged Subdomain Found with High Susceptibility to Hijacking; Potential Shadow Identity Risk due to Missing Security Headers." This empowers IT to enforce governance or decommission the asset.

Complementary Solutions: The Cooperative Defense

ThreatNG serves as the external "eyes" that complement internal identity and governance tools, creating a holistic defense against Shadow Identity.

Cooperation with Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)

• Role of ThreatNG: CASBs monitor traffic from inside the network to the cloud. ThreatNG complements this by discovering the external footprint of those cloud assets.

• Cooperative Example: A CASB might block an employee from uploading files to an unapproved Dropbox. ThreatNG cooperates by scanning for any public links or shares that might have been created before the block was in place, or from a non-corporate device, ensuring the data is not currently exposed to the open web.

Cooperation with Identity Governance and Administration (IGA)

• Role of ThreatNG: IGA tools manage the lifecycle of known users. ThreatNG identifies the unknown identities that need to be brought under management.

• Cooperative Example: ThreatNG discovers a rogue AWS account created by a developer. It flags this "Shadow Identity" and provides the details to the IGA team, who can then import the account into the central directory, enforce MFA, and apply proper policies, effectively converting a Shadow Identity into a Managed Identity.

Cooperation with Single Sign-On (SSO) Providers

• Role of ThreatNG: SSO providers secure access to sanctioned apps. ThreatNG identifies apps that are bypassing SSO.

• Cooperative Example: ThreatNG identifies a login portal for a marketing tool that is not redirected through the corporate Okta or Ping Identity login page. This finding alerts security architects to the existence of a "Shadow Identity" silo, prompting them to integrate that tool into the SSO fabric to eliminate the risk of unmanaged credentials.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does ThreatNG distinguish between a legitimate external user and a Shadow Identity? ThreatNG analyzes context. A legitimate external user (like a customer) typically interacts with known, secure public endpoints. A Shadow Identity often appears on unmanaged subdomains, utilizes personal email patterns in corporate namespaces, or appears in developer commits associated with internal code.

Can ThreatNG find Shadow Identities on personal devices? ThreatNG cannot scan personal devices directly. However, it detects the output of those devices. If an employee uses a personal laptop to push code to a public repository or create a cloud bucket using company naming conventions, ThreatNG detects those external assets.

Why is "Sensitive Code Exposure" linked to Shadow Identity? Developers often create personal accounts (Shadow Identities) on GitHub or GitLab to work on code from home. If they accidentally push proprietary code or keys to these personal repositories, ThreatNG's Sensitive Code Exposure assessment identifies the leak, linking the data breach back to the specific Shadow Identity.