Machine identities are just as important to protect as humans'

Protecting human identities is important for businesses - and machines are the same

Almost every company understands that both machine and human identities need to be protected to ensure long-term security and viability - but eight in 10 find it difficult to ensure that protection for machines.

70 per cent of the 350 IT professionals in Europe and Australia that Forrester Research questioned in its study said that they are tracking fewer than half of the most common types of machine identities found on their networks. This is despite the number of machines on business networks climbing rapidly.

Respondents understood the importance of identity protection: almost half thought that protecting machine identities would be as important than human ones over the next 12 to 24 months, while 43 per cent thought that machine identity would be more important.

"We spend billions of dollars protecting usernames and passwords, but almost nothing protecting the keys and certificates that machines use to identify and authenticate themselves," said Jeff Hudson, CEO of Venafi, which commissioned the research.

"The number of machines on enterprise networks is skyrocketing and most organisations haven't invested in the intelligence or automation necessary to protect these critical security assets. The bad guys know this, and they are targeting them because they are incredibly valuable assets across a wide range of cyber-attacks."

People have been the traditional focus for identity and access management programmes. However, as the number of physical and virtual machines on networks increases and new technologies and computing capabilities are added, protecting machine identities is becoming more important. Poor protection can lead to data theft or loss.