By Shivacha Engineering
Attackers log in more than they break in
Stolen credentials, phished sessions, leaked API keys and over-privileged accounts feature in a large share of security incidents. Sophisticated exploits make headlines; identity weaknesses do most of the damage.
The first five controls
A small number of controls reduce risk disproportionately. They are not glamorous, and they are often incomplete even in mature organisations.
- Phishing-resistant MFA (passkeys, security keys) for all staff and admin access
- Least-privilege roles and just-in-time elevation for administrators
- Secrets in a vault with rotation — never in code or images
- Centralised, retained logs of authentication and privileged actions
- Automated joiner-mover-leaver provisioning
Machines have identities too
Service accounts, CI/CD pipelines and workloads often hold the most powerful credentials. Short-lived, federated credentials — such as OIDC-based access from pipelines to cloud providers — remove long-lived keys that can leak.
In Web3, keys are identity
For digital asset systems, private keys are the ultimate credential. Institutional key management — MPC, multisig or HSM — combined with transaction policies and approval quorums applies the same principles: no single person or system should be able to move significant value alone.
Then build outward
With identity foundations in place, investments in detection, zero-trust networking and application security deliver far more value, because attackers can no longer simply log in.
