What is identity resilience and why does it matter?

Identity resilience refers to an organization’s ability to protect, secure, recover, and investigate its identity systems such as Active Directory (AD), Entra ID, Okta, Ping, and Duo before, during, and after a cyberattack. This reduces the impact of a cyber event and decreases down time so an organization can bounce back quickly and securely. 

Identity systems—such as Active Directory, Entra ID, Okta, Ping, and Duo—are often the first targets in a cyberattack and remain the leading attack vector. When identity is compromised, users lose access to essential applications and services, effectively bringing business operations to a standstill. That’s why identity is not only the first, but also one of the most critical components of an organization’s IT infrastructure to restore after an incident. Building identity resilience is therefore a foundational step toward achieving overall cyber resilience.

Why is identity resilience important for organizations and ransomware recovery?

Attackers are increasingly “logging in” to organizations.  Identity is now the primary attack vector used by threat actors. In fact, 9 out of 10 cyberattacks specifically exploit identity with Active Directory being the leading target.

When identity systems are compromised, the impact can be immediate and severe:

• Users are unable to access essential applications and services
• Business operations cannot continue
• Attackers escalate permissions and move laterally
• Recovery becomes significantly more complex without clean identity data. 

Identity is one of the first and most critical components of an organization’s IT infrastructure that must be restored after an incident. Building identity resilience is a foundational step in achieving overall cyber resilience. Without the ability to quickly, cleanly, and confidently recover the most critical identity systems, the rest of your organizations' cyber recovery becomes near impossible. 

How do attackers compromise identity systems?

Attackers use a combination of social engineering, credential theft, and technical exploits to infiltrate identity environments. Common methods include:

Credential-Based Attacks

• Phishing
• Credential stuffing
• Password spraying
• MFA fatigue or MFA bypass

Technical Exploits

• Weak or missing multi-factor authentication
• Session hijacking
• Exploitation of domain misconfigurations
• Malware that harvests credentials

Once inside, attackers tend to impersonate legitimate users to escalate permissions and move laterally across a network to gain more privileges. 

The core pillars of a strong identity resilience strategy

There are several core components of a strong identity resilience strategy. Building identity resilience requires a combination of proactive defenses and the ability to perform rapid, clean recovery.

1. Proactively harden identity systems

Organizations should regularly assess identity systems to scan and detect:

• Misconfigurations
• Vulnerabilities
• Unauthorized permission changes
• Indicators of compromise

Early detection significantly reduces the chance of an attacker exploiting weaknesses.

2. Automated, clean, and tested recovery

A resilient recovery process must:

• Recover identity systems without internet access.
• Be decoupled from the compromised operating system.
• Require no manual intervention.

This ensures authentication services can be restored safely and efficiently.

3. Accelerated post-breach forensics

Following containment and recovery, organizations must verify that:

• No malware has been reintroduced.
• No persistence mechanisms remain.
• Unauthorized accounts or configurations have been removed.
• The full attack path is understood and remediated.

Without this step, follow-on attacks are likely, especially after identity-layer compromises. 

How can businesses improve their identity resilience?

Businesses can improve their identity resilience by adopting a holistic proactive and reactive approach to protecting, securing, and recovering their identity systems. This means organizations should:

• Continuously monitor identity systems to correct misconfigurations.
• Detect malicious changes early to remediate threats before they escalate into full compromise.
• Invest in solutions that enable fast, clean, and malware-free recovery after an attack.
• Ensure identity systems can be confidently and consistently recovered.
• Conduct post-breach forensics to prevent follow-on attacks and close any backdoors.
• Reduce the risk of malware persistence and strengthen overall identity defenses.

How to measure and assess identity resilience?

Organizations can measure and assess their identity resilience by ensuring they have the correct solutions that enable protection, security, and recovery of their critical identity systems throughout the entire attack lifecycle. Regular drills and testing of their identity security and protection capabilities is key to not only preventing attacks but also ensuring that recovery is confidently in reach in the case of a compromise. 

How is identity resilience different from identity management?

Identity management and identity resilience are related but serve different purposes in a security lifecycle. 

Identity management

• Supports day-to-day identity and access operations.
• Ensures users have appropriate access.
• Includes user provisioning, authentication, authorization, and lifecycle tasks.

 Identity resilience

• Focuses on protecting, securing, recovering, and performing forensics on identity systems.
• Ensures that critical identity systems remain safe and resilient on a day-to-day basis.
• Helps prevent identity-based attacks through proactive security measures
• Enables organizations to actively recover from identity-based compromise

What role does Cohesity play in enabling identity resilience?

Cohesity provides a comprehensive solution to protecting, securing, and recovering an organization's critical identity infrastructure, including Active Directory and Entra ID. Cohesity Identity Resilience provides end-to-end protection for identity including proactive continuous monitoring, automated recovery, and post-breach forensics to ensure that you can safeguard your identity systems before, during, and after an attack. In addition, we provide and partner with expert 24/7 incident response team to ensure that a clean and seamless recovery is always confidently in reach.