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Sanjeev NC
Imagine this scenario.
Joan, a sales rep, resigns from a tech company. Despite leaving, her user account remains active in the company's system, granting her continued access to their CRM tool with sensitive customer information. Now, Joan’s account is an “inactive user account”.
This situation shows the risks of inactive user accounts in an organization's IT. Failing to deactivate accounts for ex-employees can lead to security breaches and compliance lapses, exposing the company to data vulnerabilities and regulatory violations.
Deactivating Joan’s user account seems like such a simple thing to do but yet it highlights a critical oversight organizations frequently face. In a complex IT landscape, the volume of user accounts leads to neglect in managing inactive accounts.
Why does this happen? What risks does it create? How can we mitigate them?
Inactive user accounts aren’t just created when an employee leaves the company. Here are some common scenarios.
When employees leave an organization, their access to systems and software is not revoked promptly due to incomplete or inefficient offboarding processes.
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Employees who change roles within an organization might keep access rights from their previous position, granting them inappropriate access to certain software or data that's no longer relevant to their new role.
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Shared accounts for software access can lead to unauthorized access if not properly managed or if passwords aren't changed when a member leaves the organization.
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Contractors, freelancers, or temporary workers are often granted access to system software for the duration of their projects. If their access is not deactivated upon completion of their contract, they retain access to the software.
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During development or testing, IT departments create test accounts to simulate user access or troubleshoot. These accounts are supposed to be temporary but can be overlooked, posing a security risk if they have access to live data or production environments.
These activities create a security risk in the form of inactive user accounts, which must be managed to avoid security implications.
Here is a summary of the challenges:
The challenge starts with insufficient visibility into the active status of all user accounts across the organization's IT landscape. Without comprehensive tools and processes for monitoring account activity, IT teams struggle to identify which accounts remain active unnecessarily.
This lack of visibility is often aggravated by complex IT infrastructures that span across multiple platforms, including on-premises systems, cloud services, and SaaS applications, making it difficult to track user activities and access rights systematically.
IT departments manage numerous software applications and systems, each requiring specific knowledge and procedures for user access. This places a heavy administrative burden on IT teams and increases the risk of oversight.
With every new application or service, managing user accounts becomes more daunting, leading to inactive accounts slipping through the cracks due to prioritization of more immediate or critical tasks.
The persistence of inactive user accounts is due to the lack of offboarding processes and poor communication between departments. Effective account management requires coordination between HR, IT, and other relevant departments to ensure timely action when an employee leaves.
Underestimating risks with inactive accounts and lack of awareness and training on security best practices hinder proactive account management. Without a robust offboarding protocol and clear lines of communication, the risk of inactive accounts becoming security vulnerabilities increases.
The persistence of inactive user accounts is due to the lack of offboarding processes and poor communication between departments. Effective account management requires coordination between HR, IT, and other relevant departments to ensure timely action when an employee leaves.
Underestimating risks with inactive accounts and lack of awareness and training on security best practices hinder proactive account management. Without a robust offboarding protocol and clear lines of communication, the risk of inactive accounts becoming security vulnerabilities increases.
1. Unauthorized Access: Inactive accounts can be exploited by staff, contractors or malicious individuals to gain access to systems and sensitive data.
2. Data Breaches: Inactive accounts pose a risk of data breaches enabling attackers to pilfer information like customer details, financial records and intellectual property.
3. Compliance Violations: Maintaining accounts can result in breaches of standards such as GDPR, HIPAA or SOX leading to potential fines and legal complications.
4. Insider Threats: Contractors or ex-employees with access may abuse their privileges to harm systems, steal data or disrupt operations.
5. Increased Attack Surface: Each inactive account expands the organizations attack surface making it more vulnerable to cyber threats and heightening security risks.
6. Difficulty in Detecting Breaches: Breaches through accounts can be challenging to identify as the activities may appear legitimate initially delaying response times.
7. Legal and Financial Consequences: Beyond compliance violations, organizations might face legal action from affected parties or individuals due to negligence in managing access controls.
8. Compromised Network Security: Inactive accounts with network access can be leveraged for movement, within the network, jeopardizing systems and escalating potential harm.
Here is an overview of how to manage the risks associated with inactive user accounts:
Establish clear offboarding processes to ensure that all access rights are revoked when employees leave the organization, change roles, or when temporary contracts end.
Conduct periodic reviews and audits of all user accounts to identify and deactivate or delete any inactive accounts. This should include checking for unnecessary privileges that current employees might hold.
Utilize access management solutions to automate the deactivation and deletion of user accounts based on specific triggers, such as employment status changes or prolonged inactivity.
Ensure that users have only the minimum level of access required to perform their job functions. Regularly review and adjust these access levels to minimize potential risks.
Implement strong authentication methods, like multi-factor authentication (MFA), to add an extra layer of security, making it harder for unauthorized users to exploit inactive accounts.
Raise awareness among current employees about the importance of security practices, including reporting any suspected misuse of accounts or sharing credentials.
Foster better communication between HR, IT, and other relevant departments to ensure timely updates on employee status changes, role transitions, and contract completions.
Where possible, set accounts to automatically expire after a certain period of inactivity or upon the anticipated end date of a user’s need for access.
Implement monitoring tools to detect unusual activities associated with user accounts and have a response plan in place for quick action if an inactive account is compromised.
For necessary shared accounts, ensure strict control and monitoring, including regular password changes and access reviews.
Use RBAC to easily manage and review access permissions based on the roles within the organization, making it easier to adjust or revoke access as needed.
Create policies and procedures that cover the entire lifecycle of user identities and access rights within the organization, from account creation to deactivation.
Foster an organizational culture that prioritizes cybersecurity, where employees understand their role in maintaining security and are encouraged to take proactive steps to secure access.
While these strategies might help mitigate the risks of inactive user accounts, they’re still periodic. An audit based approach for access reviews only keeps the systems safe for a short period of time.
What organizations need is a system that constantly keeps them informed of access review gaps so they can act on it. That’s where Stitchflow can help.
Stitchflow automatically applies over 100 checks across user access, drift in enrollment between groups, apps and channels, device health, compliance checks, and unused apps. Stitchflow identifies exactly what needs to be fixed, enables remediation in bulk, and then automates maintenance so gaps are addressed as soon as they are found.