Anyone trying to strengthen their cybersecurity efforts should definitely take a look at this robust approach.
Supports Zero Trust strategies. Prevents machine identity theft. Increases visibility in all aspects. It strengthens your security by connecting with new or external machine identities. Machine identity management can be easily automated, which can result in tighter control of all connected devices, including those that are not part of your ecosystem (such as vendor machines or new devices entering the infrastructure).
Digital identities as a way to replace passwords
I want to end this article by pointing out one more thing: how secure identities really are, especially when you compare them to passwords. Malicious actors can now easily crack or steal passwords, especially since most people still don't adopt strong password habits. Additionally, passwords are stored centrally in repositories or can be captured while in transit across the Internet.
Digital identities (especially PKI certificates) reduce all of these risks by using a public/private key pair generated by a cryptographic algorithm. So authentication can happen when the machine proves that it has the private key – without revealing it or sharing it on the network. This greatly limits the opportunities for malicious actors to intercept keys and break into your systems.
Therefore, you can see machine identity management as a good strategy for replacing passwords within your environment, which will further strengthen your cybersecurity. I believe that machine identity management has a lot of potential, mainly because it brings evolution to security practices, while also providing a necessary foundation for the success of more sophisticated cybersecurity measures.
We expect machine identity management to gain more traction as we move towards the new normal, a place where we will definitely need new standards.
