Strengthening Access Governance for Human and Machine Identities

$4.9 million. The global average cost of a data breach in 2024 – a 10% increase over last year – and the highest total ever.

‍

With the growing adoption of cloud technologies, it’s crucial to secure sensitive data with more comprehensive security strategies from the outset to avert potentially catastrophic breaches.

In today’s cloud-native landscape, the criticality of access level security – defining what individuals are permitted to access within a system and when – cannot be overstated.

‍

To put it simply, securing identities is the key to preventing breaches – and legacy approaches to governing access to sensitive data and critical infrastructure no longer work due to the explosion of cloud-native technologies. It is now more difficult than ever to control who has access to what since the cloud can be accessed not just by human users, but by non-human identities (NHIs), in many more ways than typical applications.

‍

In honor of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, here are a few best practices organizations can take into consideration this October and beyond:

• Discovery and Ownership: Develop and maintain a comprehensive inventory of all identities, including NHIs and humans, along with their respective human owners.

• Risk Posture: Assess the risks linked to each NHI, including inactive service accounts, outdated keys and over privileged access.

• Governance and Lifecycle Management: Assign governance responsibilities to service owners, including workflows for secret rotations, onboarding and offboarding of NHIs and risk remediation.

By controlling access across human and non-human identities, not only are you boosting productivity and enabling better business outcomes, you’re also safeguarding corporate resources and networks. When access to critical systems is secure, the entire organization's risk is minimized.

Interested in learning more about P0’s unified platform? Contact us at sales

sales@p0.dev or book a demo