🧠 AuditSec Intel™ 1085
“The Identity Illusion: When Too Many Identities Become No Control at All”
🔍 Introduction — Identity Is No Longer Just ‘Users’
Most organizations still think identity means employees and admins.
Attackers don’t.
In 2025 breach investigations, the fastest-growing attack surface wasn’t endpoints or networks — it was identity sprawl:
- Service accounts
- Bots
- APIs
- Automation identities
- Cloud roles
- Temporary tokens
The modern enterprise doesn’t have an identity problem.
It has an identity explosion problem.
⚠️ 2025 Breach Pattern — Identity Sprawl Abuse
CISORadar Identity Signals (2024–2025):
| Identity Type | Assumption | Exploited Weakness |
|---|---|---|
| Service Accounts | “Non-human = safe” | Long-lived secrets |
| Cloud Roles | “Temporary access” | Privilege chaining |
| API Tokens | “Scoped” | Scope creep |
| Automation Bots | “Trusted” | No rotation |
| Shared IDs | “Internal use” | Zero accountability |
💬 CISORadar Insight:
“Attackers don’t steal identities anymore —
they borrow the forgotten ones.”
🧩 Ignored Control
ISO 27001 A.5.18 | NIST AC-2, AC-3
Identity Governance & Accountability
| Control Objective | What It Requires | Common Gap |
|---|---|---|
| Identity Inventory | All identities known | Shadow identities |
| Ownership | Named owner per identity | Orphaned accounts |
| Privilege Scope | Least privilege | Role creep |
| Lifecycle | Creation → rotation → deletion | Never retired |
| Monitoring | Identity behavior visibility | No anomaly detection |
| Board Oversight | Identity risk metrics | Zero reporting |
💬 CISORadar Observation:
“We rotate passwords faster than we retire identities.”
🧠 CISORadar Control Test of the Week
Control Reference: ISO 27001 A.5.18 / NIST AC-2
Objective: Restore accountability to identity.
🔍 Test Steps
1️⃣ Enumerate all human and non-human identities
2️⃣ Identify identities without a named owner
3️⃣ Review privilege scope vs actual usage
4️⃣ Identify stale and never-used identities
5️⃣ Validate rotation and decommissioning
6️⃣ Calculate Identity Proliferation Index (IPI)
✅ Expected Outcome
- Every identity has an owner
- Excess privileges removed
- Stale identities eliminated
- Identity risk visible to leadership
Suggested Tools:
IAM | PAM | CIEM | Cloud IAM | CISORadar IPI Lens
🧨 Real Case — “The Bot That Never Logged Out”
Incident:
A retail platform was breached via a service account created for testing — 2 years earlier.
What failed:
- No owner
- No rotation
- Admin privileges remained
Impact:
- 9M customer records accessed
- ₹390 Cr regulatory exposure
Lesson:
“If no one owns an identity, attackers will.”
📊 CISORadar Impact Model — Identity Proliferation Index (IPI)
| Metric | Before CISORadar | After CISORadar |
|---|---|---|
| Total Identities | Unknown | Fully inventoried |
| Orphaned Accounts | 18% | <1% |
| Over-Privileged Identities | 41 | 5 |
| Identity-Based Incidents | Recurrent | Eliminated |
| Board Visibility | None | Quantified |
🧭 Leadership Takeaway
Boards must stop asking:
❌ “Do we have IAM?”
And start asking:
✅ “How many identities exist?”
✅ “Who owns them?”
✅ “Which identities matter most?”
Because in the modern enterprise:
Identity is infrastructure.
And unmanaged infrastructure always fails.
CISORadar turns identity sprawl into governed identity trust.
📥 Download
Identity Governance Audit Checklist + IPI Scorecard
(ISO 27001 / NIST aligned)
Available inside the CISORadar Cyber Authority Community.
🔖 SEO / Tags
#AuditSecIntel #IdentityGovernance #IAM #ZeroTrust #ServiceAccounts #CloudIAM #IPI #ISO27001 #NIST #CISORadar #DigitalTrust