Identity-First Security: Mitigating the Cloud’s Greatest Risk Vector

Compromised credentials are now the leading cause of cloud breaches, making identity your most critical attack surface. A new IDC white paper explores why this shift is happening and where traditional defenses fall short. Read on to learn how Tenable's identity-first approach turns this risk into your strongest defense.

Hack the user, own the cloud.

Attackers aren’t spending months trying to breach your cloud environment. They’re waltzing in the front door with stolen keys.

How? By targeting the biggest blind spots in any cloud environment: identity exposures.

Indeed, in the era of AI and multi-cloud sprawl, attackers no longer need to exploit systems — they exploit users. Whether through phishing, credential stuffing or over-permissioned roles, cloud identities are often the weakest link.

The identity explosion: A minefield of privileges

Think about your cloud environment. Chances are it’s a chaotic web of tens of thousands of human and machine identities, each with its own set of permissions, access rights — and identity risks.

The challenge lies in managing these identities and their associated privileges effectively across a multi-cloud or hybrid environment. Without a robust identity and access management (IAM) strategy, you leave the doors to your most critical cloud systems and data unlocked. 

As IDC notes in the white paper “Bridging Cloud Security and Exposure Management for Unified Risk Reduction,” commissioned by Tenable: “IDC research highlights that compromised credentials are now the leading cause of breaches, driving the adoption of CNAPP identity-centric security measures.”

“For example, ransomware delivered via phishing typically succeeds by compromising credentials, moving laterally, escalating privileges, and then encrypting and possibly exfiltrating data,” the white paper reads.

Complicating the picture is the now common scenario where organizations have multiple cloud service providers, each with distinct identity models and entitlements, creating what IDC calls “identity sprawl.” The result is a fragmented cloud security landscape with inconsistent policies and lack of visibility into who has access to what — amplifying your risk.

So what’s the solution? Read on to learn how Tenable can help you streamline and boost your management and protection of cloud identities.

What IDC says about Tenable’s cloud identity security capabilities

IDC highlights as a “key strength” of the Tenable Cloud Security cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP) its focus on “identity-intelligent cloud security.”

With the integration of cloud infrastructure entitlement management (CIEM) and just-in-time (JIT) access capabilities, Tenable Cloud Security detects and mitigates identity-based risks proactively, IDC notes.

“This focus is vital, as compromised credentials and over-privileged access remain leading causes of breaches — and are key factors in toxic combinations contributing to lateral movement during attacks. Automating temporary elevated access requests enforces least-privilege policies while supporting business responsiveness,” the white paper reads.

Moreover, Tenable Cloud Security’s scope, spanning on-premises and cloud environments, is “crucial” for organizations with hybrid environments and a diversity of identity systems, according to IDC.

“Its CNAPP bakes cloud security best practices into the management of each supported provider, offering a unified view that reduces identity sprawl and addresses shadow IT,” the white paper reads.

The Tenable difference: Making identity your strongest defense

Unfortunately, many platforms continue to treat identity as an isolated module, rather than integrating it across risk workflows. They might flag an over-permissioned user, but they fail to connect the dots.

Instead, Tenable’s CNAPP architecture goes beyond alerting on over-permissioned identities. It correlates identity data with runtime behavior, asset sensitivity and known misconfigurations to uncover “toxic combinations” — risk scenarios where users or services have dangerous levels of access to vulnerable systems.

By integrating identity-aware capabilities into Tenable Cloud Security and the Tenable One Exposure Management Platform, we empower your entire team:

• IAM teams: Enforce least-privilege with automated JIT controls.
• Security operations centers (SOCs): Cut through the noise and prioritize alerts based on actual identity risks.
• Architects: Baseline and remediate misaligned roles across cloud and hybrid infrastructure.

This way, Tenable Cloud Security and Tenable One help you prevent lateral movement, privilege escalation and insider threats — particularly in large organizations with complex, distributed access models.

What this means for cloud security leaders

Managing entitlements across Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and on-prem environments requires unified visibility and policy enforcement. Tenable addresses this through embedded CIEM capabilities that continuously monitor and assess user access, flag anomalies and provide actionable remediation guidance.

Because identity signals are integrated into Tenable One’s exposure management framework, architects gain visibility into how identities influence overall risk posture. This enables threat modeling that accounts for real-world attack paths rather than theoretical vulnerabilities alone.

Supercharge your cloud security program

Identity is the new perimeter. By adopting an identity-centric approach to cloud security, you can boost your defenses’ resiliency and agility, and keep pace with the ever-evolving threat landscape.

Choose a CNAPP that treats identity risks as a central part of exposure — not a feature buried in a submenu.

To get a deeper understanding of how you can leverage a unified CNAPP to build a robust, identity-intelligent security posture, we encourage you to download the IDC white paper “Bridging Cloud Security and Exposure Management for Unified Risk Reduction.”