All news with #identity security tag

🔐 This post explains how to centrally manage AWS Systems Manager Session Manager preferences across multiple accounts and Regions using CloudFormation StackSets and an AWS Lambda function. The solution automates updates to the SSM-SessionManagerRunShell document, provisions optional logging destinations (Amazon S3 or CloudWatch Logs), and can create KMS keys for session and log encryption. It aims to reduce manual configuration errors and ensure consistent security and compliance at scale.

🔐 Rubrik Zero Labs warns that the rise of agentic AI has created a widening gap between an expanding identity attack surface and organizations’ ability to recover from compromises. Their report, Identity Crisis: Understanding & Building Resilience Against Identity-Driven Threats, finds 89% of organizations have integrated AI agents and estimates NHIs outnumber humans roughly 82:1. The authors call for comprehensive identity resilience—beyond traditional IAM—emphasizing zero trust, least privilege, and lifecycle control for non-human identities.

🔒 Phishing is moving beyond email to platforms like LinkedIn, where direct messages sidestep traditional email defenses and evade many web-based controls. Attackers exploit account takeovers, weak MFA adoption, and AI-driven outreach to scale targeted campaigns against executives and cloud identity services. Because LinkedIn messages are accessed on corporate devices but outside email channels, organizations often rely on user reporting and URL blocking—measures that are slow and ineffective. Vendor Push Security recommends browser-level protections that analyze page code and behavior in real time to block in-browser phishing and SSO-based compromises.

🔐 Computer-using agents (CUAs) — AI systems that perceive screens and act like humans — are poised to scale phishing and credential-stuffing attacks by automating UI interactions, adapting to layout changes, and bypassing anti-bot defenses. Organizations should move beyond passwords and shared-secret MFA to device-bound, cryptographic authentication such as FIDO2 passkeys and PKI-based certificates to reduce large-scale compromise. SaaS vendors must integrate with identity platforms that support phishing-resistant credentials to strengthen overall security.

🔒 Amazon Cognito user pools now support AWS PrivateLink, enabling private VPC connectivity to manage and authenticate against user pools without traversing the public internet. The enhancement covers user pool management APIs, administrative operations, and sign-in for local Cognito users, but does not support OAuth 2.0 authorization code flow (hosted UI/social logins), client credentials, or federated SAML/OIDC sign-ins via VPC endpoints. It is available in all Regions where Cognito user pools exist except AWS GovCloud (US); creating VPC endpoints will incur AWS PrivateLink charges.

🔔 The Amazon Web Services Advanced .NET Data Provider Driver is now generally available for Amazon RDS and Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL and MySQL-compatible databases. The driver reduces RDS Blue/Green switchover and database failover times to improve application availability and supports multiple authentication mechanisms including Federated Authentication, AWS Secrets Manager, and IAM token-based authentication. Built on top of Npgsql, native MySql.Data and MySqlConnector, it integrates with NHibernate and supports Entity Framework for MySQL, and is released under the Apache 2.0 license.

🔒 Amazon S3 Access Grants are now available in the AWS Asia Pacific (Thailand) and AWS Mexico (Central) Regions. The feature maps corporate identities—such as Microsoft Entra ID or AWS IAM principals—to S3 datasets, enabling administrators to automate and scale dataset access. This reduces manual policy overhead and helps ensure consistent, auditable permissions. Check the AWS Region Table and product page for regional availability and details.

🔐 Autonomous AI agents are creating a new class of non-human identities that traditional, human-centric security models struggle to govern. These agents can persist beyond intended lifecycles, hold excessive permissions, and perform actions across systems without clear ownership, increasing risks like privilege escalation and large-scale data exfiltration. Security teams must adopt identity-first controls—unique managed identities, strict scoping, lifecycle management, and continuous auditing—to regain visibility and enforce least privilege.

🔒 BeyondTrust's 2026 predictions argue that the next major breaches will stem from unmanaged identity debt rather than simple phishing. The report highlights three identity-driven threats: agentic AI acting as privileged deputies vulnerable to prompt manipulation, automated "account poisoning" in financial systems, and long-dormant "ghost" identities surfacing in legacy IAM. The authors recommend an identity-first posture with strict least-privilege, context-aware controls, real-time auditing, and stronger identity governance.

⚠️ A new 2025 Consumer Impact Report from the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) finds identity fraud is driving severe mental and financial harm, with one quarter of surveyed consumers saying they seriously considered self-harm after an incident. The figure rises to 68% among self-identified victims but falls to 14% for those who contacted the ITRC, underscoring the value of professional support. The study of 1,033 general consumers also highlights rising repeat victimisation, large monetary losses — including more than 20% losing over $100,000 and 10% losing at least $1m — social media account takeovers as the most common crime, and widespread concern that AI will be a major battleground for identity security.

🔐 Self-service password reset (SSPR) can significantly cut help desk costs and reduce downtime by letting users securely change forgotten or expired credentials without contacting support. Industry research cited in the article highlights that password-related calls are common and expensive — Gartner and Forrester figures are referenced and a Specops analysis reports average savings per user. The piece outlines security best practices including tiered risk controls, MFA, enrollment hygiene, and detection measures like rate limiting and location checks. It describes Specops uReset capabilities for Entra ID and Active Directory, automated enrollment, reporting, and a First Day Password add-on to reduce onboarding friction.

🔒Microsoft outlines expanded Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) capabilities designed for modern, hybrid environments. The post highlights general availability of unified identity and endpoint sensors, broad on‑premises sensors for Domain Controllers, AD FS, and AD CS, and native integration with Microsoft Entra ID. It emphasizes an identity‑centric approach that correlates accounts across platforms, integrates with PAM, and links identity signals into Defender XDR to enable contextualized alerts, coordinated response, and automatic attack disruption across devices and sessions.

🔒 Agentic AI introduces a mounting Zero Trust challenge as autonomous agents increasingly act with inherited or unmanaged credentials, creating orphaned identities and ungoverned access. Ido Shlomo of Token Security argues that identity must be the root of trust and recommends applying the NIST AI RMF through an identity-driven Zero Trust lens. Organizations should discover and inventory agents, assign unique managed identities and owners, enforce intent-based least privilege, and apply lifecycle controls, monitoring, and governance to restore auditability and accountability.

🔐 Organizations are rapidly replacing embedded API keys and passwords with platform-native managed identities to reduce manual credential management and leakage risk. Enterprises report significant productivity gains—case studies cite up to a 95% reduction in time spent managing credentials and a 75% drop in time learning platform authentication. While major clouds (AWS, Azure, GCP) and CI platforms have built-in solutions, legacy systems and third-party APIs remain the primary obstacles to eliminating static secrets entirely.

🔐 AWS Parallel Computing Service (PCS) now supports rotation of Slurm cluster secret keys using AWS Secrets Manager. Administrators can update the credentials used for authentication between the Slurm controller and compute nodes without recreating a cluster, preserving running workloads and configuration. Regular rotation reduces the risk of credential compromise and helps meet security best practices and compliance requirements. The capability is available in all Regions where PCS operates and can be initiated from the Secrets Manager console or via API after preparing the cluster for rotation.

🔐 AI promises stronger cyber defense but expands the attack surface if not governed properly. Organizations must secure models, data pipelines, and agentic systems with the same rigor applied to critical infrastructure. Identity is central: treat every model or autonomous agent as a first‑class identity with scoped credentials, strong authentication, and end‑to‑end audit logging. Adopt layered controls for access, data, deployment, inference, monitoring, and model integrity to mitigate threats such as prompt injection, model poisoning, and credential leakage.

⚠️ Enterprises now face a reality where autonomous AI agents run with system privileges, executing code and accessing sensitive data without human oversight. Fewer than 4 in 10 AI agents are governed by identity security policies, creating serious visibility and control gaps. Mature identity programs that use AI-driven identity controls and real-time data sync deliver stronger ROI, reduced risk, and operational efficiency. CISOs must move IAM from compliance checkbox to strategic enabler.

🛡️ The Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2025 reveals Microsoft systems analyze more than 100 trillion security signals every day and warns that AI now underpins both defense and attack. The report describes adversaries using generative AI to automate phishing, scale social engineering and discover vulnerabilities faster, while autonomous malware adapts tactics in real time. Identity compromise is the leading vector—phishing and social engineering caused 28% of breaches—and although MFA blocks over 99% of unauthorized access attempts, adoption remains uneven. Microsoft urges board-level attention, phishing-resistant MFA, cloud workload mapping and monitoring, intelligence sharing and immediate AI and quantum risk planning.

🔐 Organizations facing rising phishing and ransomware threats are moving from passwords to PKI-based authentication to close gaps in traditional MFA. Certificates issued by a trusted CA and backed by asymmetric cryptography replace passwords and vulnerable SMS codes, improving both security and usability. Automated lifecycle management and user self-service reduce administrative overhead, while crypto-agility preserves long-term resilience.

🔒 This post contrasts Amazon Cognito's two primary UI approaches—managed login and a fully custom UI—and outlines feature, security, and operational trade-offs to guide architects and developers. Managed login (offered as a modern branding editor or the Hosted UI classic) offloads hosting, scaling, and maintenance while providing OAuth2 flows, federation with social and OIDC/SAML providers, passwordless options, and CloudTrail action logging. A custom UI gives full control over UX, session management, localization, and supports custom authentication flows via Lambda triggers, but requires development, hosting, and operational responsibility under the AWS Shared Responsibility Model.