AI and Fragmented Identities Increase Security Risks for Enterprises
Enterprises are increasingly challenged by the complexities of managing identity-related security alerts, with recent research revealing that investigating a single critical incident now takes an average of 11 hours. The study conducted by Enterprise Strategy Group highlights the growing fragmentation of digital identities across various technology platforms, which compounds risks for organisations, especially as Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes more integrated into business operations. Digital identities are now dispersed across numerous cloud services, developer platforms, identity providers, and infrastructure resources. This fragmentation creates blind spots for security teams, making it difficult to trace unauthorised or suspicious activities by both human and AI actors. The research indicates that this complexity hampers the productivity of engineers and security professionals, as each new system introduces additional vulnerabilities.
Moreover, the rapid advancement of AI is outpacing enterprise security governance, expanding attack vectors and exposing weaknesses in traditional security defences. With threat actors capable of moving laterally across infrastructures in mere minutes, an 11-hour investigation into identity-related incidents is inadequate. As organisations delve deeper into the AI era, they must recognise that AI significantly reduces the cost of identity attacks, leading to an expected increase in their frequency. The study also reveals that security teams typically rely on an average of 11 different tools to trace the root causes of identity-related incidents, which complicates investigations and detection of malicious activities. Credential theft, a major vulnerability, is on the rise, with enterprises reporting that it accounts for one in five data breaches and a staggering 160% increase in compromised credentials this year.
Categories: Identity Security Challenges, Fragmentation of Digital Identities, Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Security
Tags: Identity Security, Security Alerts, Digital Identities, Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Services, Fragmentation, Credential Theft, Data Breaches, Security Tools, Attack Vectors