Proactive Identity and Access Security in 2025

Cybercriminals are increasingly investing in infrastructure and automation to intensify cyberattack patterns. These groups are also adopting emerging technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), to create deepfakes and personalized spear-phishing campaigns that manipulate people into granting unauthorized access.

Adopting proactive defensive measures is the only way to prevent determined efforts to compromise identities and gain access to your environment.

Microsoft is taking increasingly strong measures to ensure it meets the highest possible security standards. Based on security experience, Microsoft has identified three priorities to improve identity and access security measures for 2025:
 

Start secure, stay secure, and prepare for new cyber threats

Many organizations face difficulties in eliminating technical and security debt while adding new users, resources, and applications. Basic security measures, such as multi-factor authentication, are implemented but may not be sufficient against advanced attacks. Understanding the entire attack surface, identifying entry points, and applying access security proactively is crucial.

The traditional reactive security approach is not enough. The guidance for 2025 is to start with the highest level of security and reduce as needed. Protecting all identities, including employees, contractors, partners, customers, and machine, service, and AI identities, is essential.

Practical measures to protect identities and security within the organization include:

• Implementing phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication.
• Configuring risk-based Conditional Access policies.
• Detecting and managing shadow IT. 
• Protecting access for non-human identities.

Zero Trust across all resources

To protect against increasing cyber threats, it is essential to have visibility and control over who and what has access to systems. This includes extending Zero Trust access controls to all resources and entry points, such as legacy applications and services, old devices and infrastructure, and any destination on the internet.

Learn key strategies to extend Zero Trust to all resources:

• Unify access policy engines to simplify Zero Trust architecture.
• Extend modern access controls to all internet applications and resources.
• Apply least privilege access, automating the identity and access lifecycle to ensure users have only the necessary access and that it is revoked when no longer needed.

Use generative AI

AI is essential to staying ahead of cyber threats in 2025. It helps identify policy gaps, detect risks, and automate processes to strengthen security practices. Organizations using Microsoft Security Copilot have significantly reduced the time it takes to resolve security incidents and improved accuracy in resolving login issues.

Discover opportunities to transform the daily work of identity professionals with generative AI:

• Improve investigations of risky users with AI-based recommendations.
• Resolve login issues through natural language conversations.
• Mitigate application risks with intuitive prompts.

It is urgent to protect your company! Contact Hydra iT to learn more!

^{Source: Microsoft}