Why Business Resilience Now Depends on Identity and Authentication
Why in News:
As cyberattacks grow increasingly persistent, identity-centric, and stealthy, the global business community faces a crucial truth: identity is now the primary attack surface. A recent article by Ashish Gupta, Managing Director (India) and Head of Engineering at Rubrik India, outlines how authentication has become the new heartbeat of business resilience — and why companies must urgently rethink their cybersecurity foundations.
Introduction:
Today, identity is under siege. Cyber attackers have shifted their focus from traditional perimeter attacks to targeting credentials, access permissions, and trust mechanisms. Amid the rise of cloud-first businesses and SaaS-based platforms, identity is no longer just an IT concern — it is a business continuity issue.
Gupta explains that the question is no longer if your organization will be targeted, but when, and how prepared you are to recover once your identity infrastructure is compromised.
Key Issues and Background:
1. The Identity-Centric Threat Landscape:
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80% of recent cyberattacks involved identity compromise.
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Identity is the new lateral movement vector, the main entry point for ransomware, and the key vulnerability in modern cyber breaches.
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Organizations often lack a dedicated identity recovery strategy, with 44% of cyberattacks exploiting unpatched or misused identities.
2. Cloud Shift and Its Risks:
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The move to hybrid cloud, SaaS platforms, and remote access has exponentially expanded the attack surface.
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Today, 25-30% of security incidents target identity systems, especially those hosted across federated cloud environments.
3. Failure of Current Defenses:
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Despite investment in AI-driven analytics, behavioral systems, and anomaly detection, identity resilience remains underfunded.
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Recovery strategies often ignore identity — focusing instead on data, VMs, and applications.
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Authentication tokens, permissions, and directory entries are easily hijacked if identity is not immediately validated post-attack.
Specific Impacts or Effects:
A. Erosion of Trust:
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Once identity is breached, trust collapses — from access controls to cloud services.
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Compromised credentials can grant attackers long-term access, remaining undetected for months.
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Business continuity fails if identity cannot be restored surgically and quickly.
B. Delayed Recovery:
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Even with backup data restored, operations stall if users cannot authenticate.
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Recovery should begin not at detection — but at re-validation of identity infrastructure.
C. Organizational Blind Spots:
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39% of companies report financial losses due to identity-related attacks.
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33% cite customer confidence erosion.
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29% experienced executive backlash due to failed or delayed breach response.
Challenges and the Way Forward:
Challenges:
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Most organizations don’t ask hard identity-related questions:
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Are identity systems backed up?
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Can compromised tokens be surgically replaced?
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Do we have visibility into identity misuse?
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Security teams still treat identity as a secondary asset rather than the frontline defense.
The Way Forward:
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Make identity recovery a first-class objective in every cyber recovery plan.
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Ensure multi-factor authentication (MFA) is implemented and backed by disaster-proof infrastructure.
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Adopt platforms that include:
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Identity mapping and versioning.
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End-to-end encryption of access credentials.
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Continuous visibility into both human and machine identities.
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Historical intelligence for traceability and rollback.
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Conclusion:
Cyber resilience is no longer about firewalls and antivirus software alone. The new battleground is identity — and how quickly you can recover it. As threats evolve, the organizations that embed authentication as a core pillar of their business continuity strategy will stand resilient. Those that don’t risk crippling breaches, loss of trust, and permanent reputational damage.
As Ashish Gupta rightly emphasizes: “The uncomfortable truth is that many organizations don’t have the answers to these questions. But attackers are betting on exactly that.” The time to invest in identity resilience is now.
5 Questions & Answers:
1. What percentage of cyberattacks today involve identity compromise?
Over 80%, according to recent industry reports.
2. Why is identity considered the new ‘attack surface’?
It is the main gateway for lateral movement, ransomware delivery, and privilege escalation in modern cyberattacks.
3. What are the risks of ignoring identity in recovery plans?
Even if data is restored, business continuity fails if users and systems can’t be re-authenticated safely.
4. How can organizations improve identity resilience?
By ensuring MFA, visibility across identity silos, backup and restore of identity infrastructure, and traceable access logs.
5. What is the biggest challenge companies face today regarding identity security?
A lack of strategic focus on identity recovery and underinvestment in the architecture of authentication and trust.
