SailPoint unveils new product to secure machine identities

SailPoint Technologies has announced the launch of SailPoint Machine Identity Security, a product designed to address the challenges of managing machine identities alongside human ones.

The new product is built specifically for machine accounts such as service accounts and bots and aims to unify the identity security process for both machine and human identities. This is expected to allow enterprises to manage all identities more holistically and efficiently.

SailPoint's recent research report, "Machine identity crisis: The challenges of manual processes and hidden risks," revealed concerning trends and challenges faced by companies in managing machine identities. According to the report, 66% of the companies surveyed rely on cumbersome manual processes for managing machine identities. Alarmingly, only 38% of these companies have real-time visibility into active machine identities, complicating management and security efforts.

Furthermore, the report highlights that 72% of professionals surveyed find machine identities harder to manage than human identities. This suggests a growing need for automated and streamlined identity solutions. The report also indicates that 88% of security professionals are concerned about the risks of deleting inactive machine identities, which might disrupt operations unexpectedly.

A significant finding from the survey shows that nearly 70% of companies are now managing more machine identities than human ones. This trend is anticipated to continue, with organisations expecting a 30% increase in machine identities over the next three to five years. This will likely outpace the growth of other identity types.

With machine identities increasingly becoming targets for attackers, effective management and security of these identities are critical. SailPoint Machine Identity Security aims to enhance an organisation's security posture by mitigating the risks associated with unmanaged or orphaned machine identities.

The new product assists organisations in discovering machine accounts, classifying and tagging them efficiently, assigning up-to-date human ownership, and certifying access to ensure unnecessary accounts and permissions are revoked. This is intended to provide enterprises with the same degree of visibility, governance, and control over machine identities as they have over human ones. Automating governance and lifecycle management also helps in easing regulatory compliance burdens.

"Machine identities are just as vulnerable to attackers as human identities," said Ben Cody, SVP, Product, SailPoint. "In some ways, machine identities can be even more vulnerable to attackers than human identities. Treating them differently from human identities just doesn't make sense in today's threat landscape—enterprises need the same level of visibility and control that they've come to expect over their human identities. Built on SailPoint Atlas, Machine Identity Security is a unified product that can help manage human and machine identities with equal rigor, and its ability to automate and scale with minimal manual intervention can set enterprises up for both short and long-term success."