Are we suffering from a cybersecurity identity crisis? According to the new CyberArk 2022 Identity Security Threat Landscape Report the increase in human and machine identities has driven a buildup of identity-related cybersecurity “debt”, exposing organisations to greater cybersecurity risk. Seventy-nine percent of respondents to CyberArk’s survey agreed that their organisation had prioritised maintaining business operations over ensuring robust cybersecurity in the last 12 months, with the report also finding that machine identities now outweigh human identities by a factor of 45x, with sixty-eight percent of non-humans or bots having access to sensitive data and assets.

Commenting on the report, Udi Mokady, founder, chairman and CEO, CyberArk said “The past few years have seen spending on digital transformation projects skyrocket to meet the demands of changed customer and workforce requirements. The combination of an expanding attack surface, rising numbers of identities, and behind-the-curve investment in cybersecurity - what we call Cybersecurity Debt - is exposing organisations to even greater risk, which is already elevated by ransomware threats and vulnerabilities across the software supply chain. This threat environment requires a security-first approach to protecting identities, one capable of outpacing attacker innovation.”

One of the report’s recommendations to combat this debt is enforcing zero trust principles, and we have an article in this issue from A10 Networks that explores how to build a zero trust architecture to stay one step ahead of network breaches. We also have an opinion piece from VIPRE that sets out how new laws proposed by the UK Government will strengthen the UK’s cyber resilience and what they will mean for managed service providers. And keeping with the theme of cyber resiliance, YesWeHack give us an insight into the security challenges of hybrid working and explain how employees can become the front line of a cybersecurity defence. As Rodolphe Harand at YesWeHack explains “When it comes to cybersecurity, it is ultimately your employees who are first and foremost the strongest line of defence.” We’ll all need to do our part to ensure that our cybersecurity debt doesn’t come due.

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