Machine identity security is the discovery, management and protection of the machine identities that govern confidentiality and integrity of information and communication between machines. The main functions of machine identity security are to:
- Prevent machine identity theft: Compromised or forged keys and certificates can be used to break into private, encrypted tunnels where confidential communications and data protection are a necessity. They can also be used to create fraudulent encrypted tunnels on corporate networks to hide malicious actions.
- Keep up with the explosive growth of machines: The number of machines is growing faster than the number of people using them. The sheer scale of machine identities that need to be protected, including mobile, cloud and IoT devices, makes it far more challenging to keep machine identities secure.
- Secure cloud-driven machine proliferation: The dynamic evolution of cloud services increases the need to rapidly assess the trustworthiness of machines, including cloud workloads, virtual machines, containers and micro services. The fluid nature of their interaction can expose their identities to abuse.
- Protect the identities of connected things: You need to protect the millions of new device identities that are now connected to the Internet, including sensors, industrial equipment, robots and medical devices, and more. Many of these devices communicate and store critical data using encrypted channels that are controlled by machine identities.
- Interact safely with new types of machine identities: As machines become more intelligent, they are replacing humans in tasks that require reasoning, perception, logical thought, memory, and learning. Our increasing reliance on smart machines makes it ever more important to validate and defend their identities.
What are the challenges of machine identity security?
Compromised machine identities can lead to unauthorized access, data breaches and other security incidents. Attackers could manipulate keys or exploit stolen certificates to impersonate legitimate machines, evade authentication protocols and gain unauthorized entry to sensitive resources.
Unlike human identities, machine identities cannot utilize authentication capabilities such as multi-factor authentication (MFA) using biometrics, a memorized password or an identity card or mobile phone. Machine identities pose different security challenges, and instead use digital certificates, SSH keys, IP addresses and other unique characteristics associated with the workload or container, together with secrets or other credentials to provide authentication.
Ensuring the security of machine identities typically requires consistent machine identity management with robust access management capabilities.
Best Practices of Machine Identity Security
- Implement least privilege and regular audits: Always assign the minimum permissions necessary for non-human identities to perform their functions. Regularly audit these permissions and the activities of these identities to ensure they are up-to-date and appropriate, minimizing security risks and potential misuse.
- Secure credential management: Use dedicated vaults or key management systems to protect sensitive information. Avoid hard-coding credentials directly into scripts or applications, as this can lead to security vulnerabilities. Instead, use secure methods to inject credentials. dynamically.
- Enhance security with strong authentication: MFA adds an extra layer of security and reduces the likelihood of unauthorized access, even if credentials are compromised.
- Ensure logging, monitoring, and incident response: Integrate non-human identities into your incident response plans to address security issues promptly and effectively.
Choosing a Machine Identity Security Solution
The best machine identity security solutions provide a standardized approach that allows your business to both accelerate digital transformation and eliminate security incidents, to, in turn, reduce revenue stream disruptions.
They are built from the ground up to provide the highest levels of security, to arm your enterprise with the observability, consistency, reliability and freedom of choice you need to manage all types of machine identities, no matter where they are used or located. The principle is simple: to better help you ensure that no machine identities fall through the cracks and negatively impact your business.
However, not all machine identity management solutions are the same, and varying deployment options can alter what features and benefits are available to potential customers.
