Principle of least privilege
Posted: Mon Feb 10, 2025 8:59 am
Given these challenges, it’s no surprise that more than 79% of respondents reported experiencing a cloud data breach in the last 18 months. Worse yet, 43% reported experiencing ten or more breaches.
Many of the organizations that reported the highest number of cloud data breaches were among those that identified excessive access to sensitive data among their employees. The healthcare industry is particularly at risk, according to the study, with nearly a third of organizations in the sector reporting that they had identified situations where employees had excessive access permissions.
The steps many CISOs are taking to mitigate the risks estonia mobile database with excessive permissions reflect a growing interest in the least privilege model, which is based on restricting each human or machine identity, user, or application to the precise permissions needed to perform legitimate work activities in order to protect cloud environments.
The principle of least privilege relies on a consistent and precise understanding of the relationship between subjects—human or machine identities—and the systems they must access to do their jobs. However, defining and enforcing dynamic least-privilege access policies presents significant challenges.
In particular, in a typical cloud environment consisting of many applications, services, and dependencies, implementing least-privilege permissions for even a single user can be challenging, let alone in multi-cloud environments.
In this regard, the difficulty of achieving least privilege is exacerbated by the proliferation of machine identities. Unlike human identities, which use usernames and passwords to authenticate and access resources, machine authentication relies on certificates and encryption keys.
Many of the organizations that reported the highest number of cloud data breaches were among those that identified excessive access to sensitive data among their employees. The healthcare industry is particularly at risk, according to the study, with nearly a third of organizations in the sector reporting that they had identified situations where employees had excessive access permissions.
The steps many CISOs are taking to mitigate the risks estonia mobile database with excessive permissions reflect a growing interest in the least privilege model, which is based on restricting each human or machine identity, user, or application to the precise permissions needed to perform legitimate work activities in order to protect cloud environments.
The principle of least privilege relies on a consistent and precise understanding of the relationship between subjects—human or machine identities—and the systems they must access to do their jobs. However, defining and enforcing dynamic least-privilege access policies presents significant challenges.
In particular, in a typical cloud environment consisting of many applications, services, and dependencies, implementing least-privilege permissions for even a single user can be challenging, let alone in multi-cloud environments.
In this regard, the difficulty of achieving least privilege is exacerbated by the proliferation of machine identities. Unlike human identities, which use usernames and passwords to authenticate and access resources, machine authentication relies on certificates and encryption keys.