Identity and Access Security

Access security is the area that has seen the clearest shift in weight in recent years. Corporate resources no longer sit inside a single building; users connect from home, from a shared office, from a mobile device. In that setting the network perimeter loses its meaning, and identity is what remains as the real boundary.

Multi-factor authentication is therefore no longer an improvement but a baseline requirement. It is not sufficient on its own: without conditional access policies defining which account can reach which resource under which conditions, MFA protects only the moment of sign-in. What happens after the session starts stays unseen.

The most critical area is privileged accounts. The server administrator, the database owner, the network device administrator — when these accounts are compromised, every other control is bypassed. Privileged access management (PAM) keeps their passwords in a vault, grants access for a limited time and records the session. Identity threat detection makes unusual activity in the directory visible before an attack spreads.