What Is ITDR?

A stolen password. An unusual login. A silent privilege change. That’s all an attacker may need to quietly move across your environment and infiltrate your sensitive systems.

An identity threat detection and response (ITDR) system can help you detect and stop identity-based attacks before they escalate.

In this post, we explore what ITDR is, why organizations need it, how it works, and the benefits of adopting strong identity protection solutions.

What is identity threat detection and response?

Identity threat detection and response (ITDR) is a cybersecurity framework designed to protect user identities and accounts against malicious misuse. 

“Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) refers to a set of security practices and technologies designed to detect, investigate, and respond to threats targeting digital identities within an organization. These threats often involve compromised credentials, privilege escalation, or unauthorized access to sensitive systems.”

 Gartner.

ITDR involves continuously monitoring user activity across your IT environment, detecting anomalies, and immediately responding to threats involving compromised accounts.

ITDR solutions often complement IAM, PAM, and SIEM tools, but go deeper by focusing specifically on identity misuse.

Why is ITDR crucial?

Attackers prefer to “log in rather than break in”. They no longer need to breach firewalls or exploit complex vulnerabilities — they can compromise your systems through:

• Credential theft and phishing. Hackers often use phishing emails, social engineering, or malware to steal valid login credentials.
• Brute force login attempts and password spray attacks. In brute-force attacks, cybercriminals attempt to guess passwords, whereas in password spray attacks, they attempt to use common passwords across multiple accounts.
• MFA fatigue attacks and session hijacking. Some adversaries bombard a user with endless multi-factor authentication prompts, hoping the user eventually approves one, while others steal session cookies or tokens to hijack active sessions. 
• Privilege escalation and lateral movement. Once cybercriminals are inside your perimeter, they can conduct privileged identity attacks, elevating their access to move deeper into your systems. 
• Insider identity threats. Not all identity threats come from outsiders. Malicious insiders with valid access can also pose a major risk to your systems. A disgruntled employee could misuse their credentials to steal data; alternatively, a trusted insider may exploit access to conduct fraud or espionage.

Identity threats can be extremely difficult to detect with standard security tools that focus on endpoints, networks, or perimeter defenses. They often can’t spot identity threat indicators such as abnormal activity by legitimate users, sudden privilege escalation, or unauthorized access to sensitive data.

ITDR solutions, on the other hand, give organizations visibility into identity risk signals and can prevent or interrupt attacks before they cause damage.

How ITDR works 

Strong identity security requires continuous monitoring, smart analytics, and rapid identity threat response. ITDR solutions typically perform four key functions:

1. Continuous identity monitoring

ITDR involves establishing real-time monitoring of all identity-related activities. This typically includes tracking authentication attempts, access requests to sensitive resources, changes in privileges, and user interactions with applications and systems.

2. Threat management

ITDR can help you proactively identify vulnerabilities in your infrastructure. This can include discovering unmanaged privileged accounts, detecting access misconfigurations, and identifying excessive permissions.

3. Anomaly detection

ITDR solutions spot suspicious login patterns, risky commands, and other actions that might deviate from a user’s baseline behavior, revealing indicators of identity compromise that traditional cybersecurity tools might miss.

4. Incident response

In addition to identity attack detection, ITDR tools provide immediate automated response actions such as terminating suspicious sessions, blocking accounts, or sending detailed alerts for further investigation.

Benefits of implementing ITDR

Organizations that adopt the ITDR framework can benefit from the following advantages:

Reduced attack surface

By continuously discovering unmanaged accounts and identifying excessive privileges, ITDR enables you to proactively eliminate hidden identity risks before attackers manage to exploit them.

Prevention of lateral movement

The ability of ITDR solutions to detect abnormal authentication patterns and privilege escalation attempts can stop attackers from moving deeper into your network after an initial compromise.

Fast threat detection and response

ITDR dramatically reduces the time it takes to detect identity compromise. Real-time monitoring and behavioral analytics can help you uncover threats that would otherwise remain hidden for weeks or months. An ITDR solution’s response capabilities, in turn, can help ensure early identity threat mitigation.

Automation

ITDR can significantly reduce not only the time it takes to detect and contain threats but also operational overhead for your IT and security teams. Additionally, automation leads to more consistent response measures, fewer errors, and a significantly stronger overall security posture.

Incident investigation

When incidents occur, ITDR solutions provide the forensic visibility necessary to understand the full scope of compromise and identify all affected accounts. ITDR tools typically help teams quickly determine:

• Which account(s) were compromised
  
• What system(s) were accessed
  
• What was modified or exfiltrated
  
• How the breach occurred.

Enhanced compliance

Comprehensive identity monitoring and detailed audit logs help organizations meet the requirements of HIPAA, PCI DSS, GDPR, DORA, and other standards, laws, and regulations that mandate identity security controls.

Cost savings

All this results in significant cost savings. Early identity breach detection and containment means avoiding the massive costs of a full-blown data breach — expenses that can run into millions due to downtime, recovery, legal penalties, and reputational damage.

ITDR best practices

To ensure robust protection against identity threats, organizations should follow these ITDR best practices:

• Eliminate unused accounts. Regularly audit user and service accounts to remove dormant, orphaned, or unnecessary identities.
  
• Enforce least-privilege access. Grant elevated permissions granularly to ensure users can access only the data they need for their job. Review and adjust access regularly to prevent privilege sprawl.
  
• Implement multi-factor authentication (MFA). Strengthen authentication by enforcing MFA for all accounts.
• Continuously monitor user activity. Track privileged user activity in real time. Identify deviations that may indicate account takeover or misuse by insiders.
  
• Automate response workflows. Respond to threats instantly. Automatically disable suspicious sessions and users.

Syteca is a next-generation privileged access management (PAM) platform with powerful ITDR capabilities. 

Syteca enables you to discover and take control of all unmanaged accounts that could serve as entry points for identity attacks. You can also selectively grant access to your critical endpoints and verify each user’s identity through two-factor authentication.

Once access is granted, Syteca delivers 360-degree visibility into user activity across different environments. Thanks to Syteca’s powerful alerting and incident response capabilities, you can instantly detect and stop identity threats before they escalate into breaches.