One Identity finds that dormant accounts pose major risk

IT security firm One Identity has found that 70% of respondents in a recent survey lacked confidence that accounts of former employees are fully deactivated in a timely manner.The firm said the results of the study of more than 900 IT security professionals, conducted by Dimensional Research, spotlights how common security best practices-such as timely removal of access to corporate data and applications, dormant account identification, and role administration-continue to be a challenge and concern for organizations worldwide.The respondents expressed a lack of confidence that all former employees and employees changing roles are fully deprovisioned-or have their accounts changed or removed-in a timely enough manner. Therefore, their accounts remain open and available with active authorization even after an employee changes roles or leaves the organization.Only 14 percent say they remove access for users immediately upon a change in HR status. Related findings point to concerning practices regarding management of dormant accounts. Only nine percent are confident that they have no dormant accounts, only 36 percent are “very confident” they know which dormant user accounts exist, and a remarkable 84 percent confessed that it takes a month or longer to discover these dangerous open doors into the enterprise. Best practices demand that access be removed for employee accounts that are no longer active. In the case where an employee changes roles, access needs to be altered to provide the new access and authorization required for the new role and remove access that is no longer needed. Oftentimes, the removal of no-longer-needed access is overlooked. When user accounts are not deprovisioned (often called dormant accounts), they are open invitations for disgruntled employees, hackers or other threat actors, who can exploit the accounts and gain access to sensitive systems and information, resulting in data breaches or compliance violations.”Exploitation of excessive or inappropriate entitlements remains a goldmine for threat actors who will then capitalize on access to gain a foothold in an organization to steal data or inject malware. This data is a wake-up call to organizations that they need sound solutions in place now, such as One Identity Starling IARI, that accelerate the deprovisioning of access, proactively discover of dormant accounts, and help ensure appropriate access rights across the entire organization and user population,” added Jackson Shaw, senior director of Product Management for One Identity. The user account access and management challenges are not limited to legacy systems and data, as they also are relevant for newer technologies such as file-sync-and-share services like Box and Dropbox. Only 14 percent of respondents report deprovisioning access to these accounts in a centralized/automated manner. Other findings from One Identity's Global State of IAM Study provide further evidence of the challenges organizations face with regard to managing employee access to IT resources:

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