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    • 🛣️What’s Next? How to use Identity Intelligence effectively
    • 📚Identity Security Reading List
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 IAM Teams
  • Blogs
    • 0ktapus for humans
    • Oort Releases GitHub Integration To Extend Identity Threat Detection
    • Oort Recognized Twice as a Sample Vendor in Gartner® 2023 Hype Cycle Reports™
    • Oort's Response Capabilities: Remediate Compromised Accounts with Just One Click
    • Oort Unveils Dashboard, Providing A Single Pane of Glass for Identities
    • Oort’s New Identity Security Dashboard
    • Oort Unveils Identity Technology Ecosystem, Bringing Identity Data out of Orbit and Into View
    • Oort: Your Security Layer On Top Of Okta
    • Populating the Unpopulated: Challenges of Building a Comprehensive User Inventory
    • Protecting IT Help Desk Teams Against Cyber Attacks
    • Protecting Salesforce Accounts from Takeovers and Ungoverned Access
    • Restrict Guest Access Permissions: Best Practices and Challenges
    • Seizing the Communication Opportunity: Aligning Perspectives in Identity Security
    • Session Hijacking in a Post-Genesis World
    • SIEM vs. Security Data Lake: Why it's Time to Rethink Your Security Program
    • Speaking the Same Language for Identity Security: Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond
    • State of Identity Security research reveals 40% of accounts use weak or no form of multi-factor authentication to protect identities
    • Strengthening Identity Controls: Mapping to CIS CSC and NIST CSF Security Frameworks
    • Strengthening Identity Security with Single Sign-On (SSO) Systems
    • Succeeding with Proper Detection for Identity Security: A Comprehensive Approach
    • Taking a Data-Driven Approach to Identity Security
    • The Concerning Prevalence of Weak Second Factors
    • The Crucial Role of an Identity Security Leader
    • Why I am Joining Oort
    • The Quest for a Passwordless World
    • Understanding Azure Active Directory (Azure AD)
    • Understanding the Implications of New SEC Rules on Cyber Incident Disclosure
    • Unlocking the Power of Zero Trust: The Crucial Role of Identity and Oort's Identity Security Platform
    • Respond Even Quicker to Identity Threats
    • What to Look Out For at Gartner IAM
    • 7 Critical Requirements for Securing Third-Party and Vendor Access
    • Best Practices for Efficiently Responding to Identity Threats
    • Announcing our Identity Technology Partner Ecosystem
    • Catching waves and building clouds
    • Cisco Announces Intent to Acquire Oort
    • CISO Perspectives: Eric Richard, HubSpot
    • Defining Roles & Responsibilities for an Identity Security Program
    • Detecting Session Hijacking
    • 8 Things to Look for in an ITDR Solution
    • Enhancing Identity Threat Detection: Introducing Oort’s New GitHub Integration
    • Founder Perspective: Matt Caulfield On Why He Started Oort
    • Founder Perspective: Vision To Reality
    • Four Reasons Why Traditional SIEMs Fall Short For Identity Security Programs
    • How Oort Partners with Duo for Unbeatable Secure Access
    • Governance, Risk, and Compliance
    • How to Find Inactive Users
    • Identity and Access Management and Oort Explained
    • 5 Identity Security Questions Every IAM Leader Needs to Answer
    • Identity security is bigger than just ITDR
    • Identity is the apex threat vector, so why is identity security still a mess?
    • Identity Threat Detection
    • Identity Threat Detection and Response: what you need to know
    • Identiverse 2023: What I'm Looking Forward to & What Not to Miss
    • Interview with Oort: Best Practices for Managing & Protecting Service Accounts
    • Interview with Alex “Sasha” Zaslavsky (Oort Data Science Lead)
    • Interview with Andy Winiarski (Head of Solutions Engineering)
    • Interview with Nicolas Dard (Oort’s VP of Product Management)
    • Introducing our Latest Integration to Protect Identities in AWS
    • Introducing The 2023 State of Identity Security Report
    • Maintaining a Strong Identity Security Posture: Why IAM Hygiene Matters
    • Managing Machine Identities: A Comprehensive Guide
    • Managing Risk In Shipwreck Diving and Security
    • Monitoring MFA Usage and Adoption: Strengthening Your Security Strategy
    • Okta Breach: Why Attackers Target GitHub, and What You Can Do to Secure It
    • Okta Security
    • Oort and Polarity Combine to Provide Instant Context on Identities
    • Oort + Polarity: Instant Identity Context to Power Investigations and Response
    • Oort Announces $15M in Seed and Series A Funding Round
    • Oort Stacks Go-to-Market Leadership Team Following Series A Investment
    • Oort Extends Identity Threat Detection with New AWS Integration
    • Announcing General Availability of the Oort Identity Analytics & Automation Platform
    • Oort Joins Forces with Microsoft Intelligent Security Association to Bring Visibility into Unmanaged Devices
    • Oort Joins the Microsoft Intelligent Security Association (MISA)
    • Building an Effective Identity Security Program: A Comprehensive Handbook
    • Oort Launches Identity Security Platform in Auth0 Marketplace
    • Oort Launches Identity Security Platform in AWS Marketplace
    • Oort Launches One-Click Remediation Actions for Streamlined Identity Security Response
    • Oort Origins and Our Vision for Identity Security
  • Release Notes
    • Week 22, 2024
    • Week 21, 2024
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On this page
  • Data-Driven Solutions
  • To Analyzing 500k Identities: Our Methodology
  • Data Science, Machine Learning, and Securing your IAM
  • Download Your Free Copy
  1. Blogs

Taking a Data-Driven Approach to Identity Security

PreviousSucceeding with Proper Detection for Identity Security: A Comprehensive ApproachNextThe Concerning Prevalence of Weak Second Factors

In case you missed it, Oort released the inaugural 2023 State of Identity Security report. If you don’t want to download a copy, you can read all about the report's key findings in another blog we published today.

In this blog, however, I wanted to outline our methodology and explain why I think we have something unique to say.

Data-Driven Solutions

We are building our product in a way that fresh and accurate data is always available for analysis, while still securely stored. Tools like enable us to aggregate vast amounts of data in no time and use it to drive our product decisions and help customers to answer critical questions.

I’m a big believer in data-driven solutions to business needs. In fact, without this, data science can be useless. For this report I worked with Michael Marriott, our head of product marketing, to answer his key data requirements. Over the course of several months, we collaborated to derive the most impactful data points to pull into the analysis.

There have already been some excellent reports conducted on identity security. These reports are generally qualitative findings from survey responses. These provide a valuable lens into the most significant concerns facing security leaders today. However, very few studies show the scale of the problem facing the average company.

Almost every new customer I speak with is surprised by the scale of their identity problem. They might suspect they might not have 100% MFA coverage or have a handful of dormant accounts sitting in the IDPs. It often sets off alarm bells when they learn that more than 40% of their workforce have no strong MFA, and more than 24% of accounts are inactive.

This report provides a view of the following:

  • What the typical company looks like

  • The most common identity weaknesses

  • What (and who) are attackers targeting

To Analyzing 500k Identities: Our Methodology

One of my favorite data-driven security reports is Verizon’s (DBIR), which brings excellent insights year after year. It’s a behemoth: 108 pages and 3 pages alone for the methodology.

This report may not have three pages of text on the methodology and is 24 pages instead of 108, but we want to make our approach as transparent as possible.

This report analyzed user data, login information, and information from identity providers, including Okta, Azure Active Directory, Duo, and Auth0. The analysis covers more than 500,000 identities in the second half of 2022. We focused on North American companies with more than 1,000+ employees.

The paper relies on various ad-hoc analyses and threat detection rules created by the Oort Data Science team, including event-based and behavioral detections.

We have plenty more ideas for our following report, but if there is anything you would love to see, we would love to hear from you!

Data Science, Machine Learning, and Securing your IAM

One thing that we are trying to avoid in this discussion is talking about machine learning. ML is a tool that should serve us to achieve certain goals and not be a standalone topic. Getting swept up amidst the ChatGPT hype is easy.

There is a clear place for machine learning. You need advanced machine learning capabilities to innovate within an existing market. You need ChatGPT to beat Google at search to overcome the millions of human hours Google invested in its engine.

On the other hand, in early markets (such as Identity Threat Detection and Response), you should evolve with your customer base and feed them the level of analysis they know how to process and operationalize.

For example, Oort uses ML-driven alerts for abnormal behaviors and anomalous trends. However, is this where you should first focus? Not when a large number of active users have no MFA and you have hundreds of dormant accounts sitting there. Focusing on securing your IAM will reduce your identity attack surface and may even save you money on unnecessary licenses.

Download Your Free Copy

We should use data science to provide the best possible solution to a specific problem. So feel free to or if you have any questions about the published observations.

I’m excited to see how trends develop over time and what we find in our subsequent report. In the meantime, , and let us know if you like it, if you disagree, or if there’s anything you’d like to see in the following report.

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