All news with #least privilege tag

Exposed GitHub PATs Enable Access to Cloud Secrets

🔒 Recent research from the Wiz Customer Incident Response Team shows attackers are using exposed GitHub Personal Access Tokens (PATs) to retrieve GitHub Action Secrets and pivot into cloud environments. A read-level PAT can leverage GitHub’s API code search to locate secret references like "${{ secrets.SECRET_NAME }}" — and because those search API calls are not logged, discovery is stealthy. Once obtained, cloud provider credentials let attackers spin up resources, exfiltrate data, install malware, or persist while often evading detection. Organizations should treat PATs as privileged credentials: enforce expiration and rotation, remove cloud secrets from workflows, apply least privilege, and improve monitoring and developer training.

Zero Trust Adoption Still Lagging as AI Raises Stakes

🔒 Zero trust is over 15 years old, yet many organizations continue to struggle with implementation due to legacy systems, fragmented identity tooling, and cultural resistance. Experts advise shifting segmentation from devices and subnets to applications and identity, adopting pragmatic, risk-based roadmaps, and prioritizing education to change behaviors. As AI agents proliferate, leaders must extend zero trust to govern models and agent identities to prevent misuse while using AI to accelerate policy definition and threat detection.

The CISO Paradox: Enabling Innovation, Managing Risk

🔐 CISOs must stop being the “department of no” and enable rapid product delivery without introducing new risks. Security needs to be embedded early through close collaboration with product teams, clear business-aligned risk tolerances, and pragmatic guardrails. Assign a dedicated security partner to each product, integrate CI/CD and Infrastructure-as-Code enforcement, and automate policy checks so safe changes proceed while risky ones fail with actionable remediation.

Phishing, Privileges and Passwords: Identity Risk Guide

🔒Identity-focused attacks are driving major breaches across industries, with recent vishing incidents at M&S and Co-op enabling ransomware intrusions and combined losses exceeding £500 million. Attackers harvest credentials via infostealers, targeted phishing/smishing/vishing, breached password stores and automated attacks like credential stuffing. Implement least privilege, strong unique passwords in managers, MFA (authenticator apps or passkeys), PAM and automated identity lifecycle controls to limit blast radius.

Browser Defense Playbook: Securing the New Work Center

🛡️ Unit 42’s Browser Defense Playbook warns that modern work happens primarily in the browser—about 85% of daily tasks—and that attackers increasingly exploit that centrality with phishing, malicious extensions, drive-by downloads and session hijacks. The guide identifies common failures such as unmanaged extensions, lax policies and blind spots in encrypted traffic. It recommends extending zero trust to the browser with strong MFA, conditional access, continuous monitoring and vetted extension allow lists, and points to Prisma Browser for agentless inspection and DLP.

When Hackers Wear Suits: Preventing Insider Impersonation

🛡️ The hiring pipeline is being exploited by sophisticated threat actors who create fake personas—complete with fabricated resumes, AI-generated videos, and stolen identities—to secure privileged remote roles inside organizations. Once hired these imposters can exfiltrate data, plant backdoors, or extort employers, making the risk especially acute for MSPs that manage multiple clients. Strengthening HR verification, staged access provisioning, hardware-based MFA, network segmentation, and ongoing security awareness training are essential to mitigate this insider impersonation threat.

The CISO’s Paradox: Enabling Innovation While Managing Risk

🔒 Security leaders must shift from gatekeeper to partner, embedding practical risk controls early in product lifecycles so teams can deliver fast without exposing the business. By defining business-language risk tolerances, standardizing identity and logging, and automating guardrails in CI/CD and infrastructure-as-code, governance becomes an accelerator rather than a bottleneck. Pre-vetted, secure-by-default templates, runtime shielding and risk-based telemetry make the secure path easier for developers while preserving production resilience.

Adopting Remote Privileged Access: The Shift to RPAM

🔒 Remote Privileged Access Management (RPAM) provides a cloud-native approach to securing privileged accounts beyond traditional perimeters, enabling administrators, contractors and third-party vendors to connect securely from any device or location. RPAM enforces least-privilege, Just-in-Time access and multi-factor authentication while recording detailed session logs without relying on VPNs. By supporting zero-trust principles and scalable deployments, RPAM reduces attack surface and streamlines compliance.

Making the Most of Multicloud: Strategy and Security

☁ IT leaders must align business goals, governance, and security to realize multicloud benefits while managing complexity. This report outlines five core challenges — including visibility, compliance, and developer productivity — and provides guidance on securing multicloud deployments. It also examines ROI strategies and a practical checklist to maximize value and efficiency.

Telecom Security Reboot: Making Zero Trust Operational

🔒 Telecom operators must abandon perimeter assumptions and adopt a zero trust mindset that treats verification as continuous rather than a one-time event. This shift is organizational as much as technical, requiring unified IT/OT policies, least-privilege access and microsegmentation to limit lateral movement. The article recommends pragmatic steps — wrapping legacy systems with secure gateways and centralized authentication — and aligning controls with frameworks such as NIST and NIS2, while tracking concrete KPIs in the first 180 days.

Year-End Cybersecurity Spend: Focus on Measurable Risk

🔒 As year-end budgets close, organizations should prioritize security purchases that reduce real business risk and produce measurable outcomes. Skip vendor wish lists; focus on strengthening identity controls — expanding MFA, tightening privileged access, and auditing Active Directory — and on short, outcome-based engagements such as attack-surface reviews, tabletop exercises, and purple-team testing. Consolidate redundant tools, pre-buy continuity capacity, and document KPIs to justify future funding.

8 Effective Multicloud Security Tips and Best Practices

🔐 Multicloud adoption improves flexibility but introduces security and visibility risks unless managed centrally. Establish a central authority to define strategy, enforce policies and select cross-cloud tools, while implementing unified governance backed by identity management and automation. Treat every environment as a single trust boundary, enforce least privilege, and correlate telemetry for a unified detection-and-response posture. Limit access with short-lived sessions, recording and DLP to reduce attack surface and support auditability.

Application Containment and Ringfencing for Zero Trust

🔒 Ringfencing, or granular application containment, enforces least privilege for authorized software by restricting file, registry, network, and interprocess access. It complements allowlisting by preventing misuse of trusted tools that attackers commonly weaponize, such as scripting engines and archivers. Effective rollout uses a monitoring agent, simulated denies, and phased enforcement to minimize operational disruption. Properly applied, containment reduces lateral movement, blocks mass exfiltration and ransomware encryption while preserving business workflows.

Rethinking Identity in the AI Era: Building Trust Fast

🔐 CISOs are grappling with an accelerating identity crisis as stolen credentials and compromised identities account for a large share of breaches. Experts warn that traditional, human-centric IAM models were not designed for agentic AI and the thousands of autonomous agents that can act and impersonate at machine speed. The SINET Identity Working Group advocates an AI Trust Fabric built on cryptographic, proofed identities, dynamic fine-grained authorization, just-in-time access, explicit delegation, and API-driven controls to reduce risks such as prompt injection, model theft, and data poisoning.

What CISOs Should Know About Securing MCP Servers Now

🔒 The Model Context Protocol (MCP) enables AI agents to connect to data sources, but early specifications lacked robust protections, leaving deployments exposed to prompt injection, token theft, and tool poisoning. Recent protocol updates — including OAuth, third‑party identity provider support, and an official MCP registry — plus vendor tooling from hyperscalers and startups have improved defenses. Still, authentication remains optional and gaps persist, so organizations should apply zero trust and least‑privilege controls, enforce strong secrets management and logging, and consider specialist MCP security solutions before production rollout.

Extending Zero Trust to Autonomous AI Agents in Enterprises

🔐 As enterprises deploy AI assistants and autonomous agents, existing security frameworks must evolve to treat these agents as first-class identities rather than afterthoughts. The piece advocates applying Zero Trust principles—identity-first access, least-privilege, dynamic contextual enforcement, and continuous monitoring—to agentic identities to prevent misuse and reduce attack surface. Practical controls include scoped, short-lived tokens, tiered trust models, strict access boundaries, and assigning clear human ownership to each agent.

Moving Beyond Frameworks: Real-Time Risk Assessments

🔍 Organizations are shifting from annual, checklist-driven compliance to targeted, frequent risk assessments that address emerging threats in real time. The article contrasts gap analyses — which measure adherence to frameworks like NIST or ISO — with tailored risk reviews focused on specific threat paths (for example, access control, ransomware, AI or cloud misconfigurations). It recommends small, repeatable questionnaires, a simple scoring model and executive-ready outputs to prioritize remediation and integrate risk into governance.

Why Enterprises Still Struggle with Cloud Misconfigurations

🔒 Enterprises continue to struggle with cloud misconfigurations that expose sensitive data, according to recent industry reporting and a Qualys study. The report cites a 28% breach rate tied to cloud or SaaS services over the past year and high misconfiguration rates across AWS (45%), GCP (63%) and Azure (70%). Experts blame permissive provider defaults, shadow IT and rapid business-driven deployments, and recommend controls such as MFA everywhere, private networking, encryption, least-privilege and infrastructure-as-code.

Identity Failures Now Top Source of Cloud Risk in 2025

🔒 ReliaQuest's Q3 2025 telemetry found identity-related weaknesses were responsible for 44% of true‑positive cloud alerts, including excessive permissions, misconfigured roles and credential abuse. The report warns credentials and cloud keys often appear on crime markets — sometimes for as little as $2 — while 99% of cloud identities are reportedly over‑privileged, enabling stealthy access. It also highlights how rapid DevOps deployments can replicate legacy vulnerabilities and urges adoption of short‑lived credentials, strict least‑privilege controls and CI/CD security automation.

Blueprint for Hardening Microsoft Exchange Servers

🔒 CISA, the NSA, and international partners released the Microsoft Exchange Server Security Best Practices blueprint to help administrators of on‑premises and hybrid Exchange environments strengthen defenses against persistent cyber threats. The guidance builds on CISA’s Emergency Directive 25‑02 and emphasizes restricting administrative access, implementing multifactor authentication, enforcing strict transport security, and adopting zero trust principles. It also urges organizations to remediate or replace end‑of‑life Exchange versions, apply recommended mitigations, and consider migrating to cloud-based email to reduce operational complexity and exposure.