Guarding your digital assets: Credential theft protection

Credential Theft Protection is a major part of cybersecurity against cyber attacks. It is designed to cease attacks that specifically target user credentials. What is and what does credential theft mean ? Why is it something to take into account when implementing your cybersecurity?
Discover all the answers in this article. 

Digital pickpockets: credential theft

Credential Theft, from a technical perspective, involves the illegal acquisition of usernames and passwords. This is often with the intent to gain unauthorized access to sensitive computer systems, company networks or online accounts.  The four common causes of credential theft are: malware, phishing attacks, weak or reused passwords and attacks on cloud services.

Credentials refer to specific data or authentication tools that are required to verify the identity of a user. Other than that, credentials are extremely important when it comes to securing a company’s network infrastructure. Sometimes all it takes is one credential for an attacker to compromise a complete business. 

Credential Theft Protection is part of Endpoint Privilege Management. It involves all the things you do to prevent a credential theft situation from happening. That’s why  it’s a huge part of Cybersecurity.

Key benefits of EPM’s Credential Theft Protection

The Credential Theft Protection offers advanced anti-credential theft capabilities, which assist organizations in detecting and blocking attempted theft of credentials from your endpoint. Sounds good, but what are the core benefits? There are three huge benefits of choosing this EPM-feature.

“With this CyberArk EPM feature, you can easily fortify your own frontline, ensuring the control or protection of the environment of your digital castle.”
– Jorge Machadao Feitosa Filho, Cybersecurity expert –

Groups of pre-defined rules

There are 6 separated groups with pre-defined rules regarding Credential Theft Protection. Those groups can differ for various reasons. Depending on what you need as an organization, you can easily identify which group(s) you need. It’s also possible to combine, it just depends on your business needs. The following groups have pre-defined rules: 

1.

Browser Stored Credentials Theft: protects auto-fill credentials saved by users in a web browser.

2.

IT Application Credentials Theft: protects credentials stored in typical IT applications.

3.

Remote Access Applications Credential Theft: protects credentials used for remote system access.

4.

Suspicious Actions: this detects and prevents suspicious activity and behavior.

5.

Threat Protection: this contains policies that protect against suspicious requests.

6.

Windows Credentials Harvesting: this contains policies that protect the credentials of operating systems, including local and domain credentials.

Credential Theft Protection is part of the Endpoint Privilege Management license

EPM’s threat protection policies are not activated immediately after installation. Organizations are permitted to make a decision regarding groups of pre-defined rules. Administrators can adapt the policies that are specifically suited to their environment, ensuring optimal protection against credential theft.  

EPM’s Credential Theft Protection is a feature that is already part of the CyberArk EPM license, so there’s no need to install any additional software to have this feature up and running. This also means that it’s quite easy to implement, you’re just a few clicks away from enabling this feature.

Essential part of your cybersecurity

As stated earlier in this article, theft of digital credentials plays a significant role in cyberattacks.
Attackers seek to steal user passwords.
Therefore, Credential Theft Protection and EPM is something that you should take into consideration. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, Credential Theft Protection is crucial for cybersecurity, preventing unauthorized access by securing user credentials. It’s integrated in Endpoint Privileged Management (EPM) and addresses common, present threats such as malware and attacks. By offering advanced and customized features, it helps to detect and block potential threats and attacks that could compromise your business. It’s better to prevent than to cure, right? 

If you’re interested in Credential Theft Protection and want to know more about what this could mean for your business, contact us!

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