Security teams are tasked with protecting an organization’s crown jewels - essential data volumes, intellectual property, financial transactions, or revenue-dependent business operations – from malicious insider or external threats. It’s an evolving and difficult challenge, especially with understaffed SOC teams drowning in false alerts, and ever-increasingly sophisticated attackers using various methods to exploit network vulnerabilities.

UPDATE - Since this post was first published, MITRE has issued a technical white paper fully endorsing the implementation of Deception Technology. Download the report, entitled The Cyberspace Advantage: Inviting Them In 

For a cyber attacker, every organization is a potential target. Attack frequency and degrees of severity vary with the attacker's skill level, the assets they want, choice of tactics, and the sophistication of their targets' defenses. With attacks constantly in the headlines, it's no wonder security teams might feel overwhelmed. But in reality, not all threats are equal. Not all threats are relevant to all organizations. And not all threats are known.

We’ve written a lot on this blog about the challenge of managing excess credentials in Active Directory and how much of a cybersecurity threat they potentially pose to organizations of all sizes. In this post, we’ll review the key drivers of that threat, and then examine two tools that can—at least partially—empower security teams to gain improved visibility into these credentials and increase cyber hygiene.