Top 5 Identity-Related Threats and How to Prevent Them

Identity-related threats are disrupting your business operations and putting your clients’ sensitive data at serious risk.

Data taken from a recent report showed that 90% of organizations experienced at least one identity-related incident in the last year. Not exactly the reassuring news your clients want to hear. 

In this article, we’ll walk you through the most common identity-related threats and how to avoid them with actionable strategies and security best practices designed to protect your organization and build client trust.

5 Identity-Related Threats and What You Can Do to Avoid Them

Business Email Compromise (BEC):

Imagine clicking on an “urgent” email that appears as if the CEO sent it, asking you to make a wire transfer to a new vendor without any context. Everything appears legitimate, but the reality is that it’s a carefully orchestrated fraudulent scam, known as a business email compromise (BEC) attack, and it occurs more often than most organizations realize. 

Research showed that BEC attacks spiked 60% between January and February 2025. This alarming statistic raises the concern of whether MSP clients are truly prepared for such an attack, and whether the organization has phishing awareness training, such as phishing simulations to reinforce security policies and ensure employees can confidently identify and report suspicious emails.

Employees should be able to spot the common red flags of a BEC attack, such as suspicious variations in the email header, sudden requests for funds, or unusual language from familiar contacts with a strong sense of urgency, because one overlooked email can lead to significant financial losses.

Here’s what you can do to prevent BEC attacks

• Run periodic phishing simulations
• Invest in employee security awareness training
• Implement DMARC, SPF, and DKIM email authentication protocols

Credential Stuffing

Weak passwords are a prime catalyst for credential stuffing, where attackers use stolen credentials to gain unauthorized access across multiple accounts or systems. Attackers may also leverage infostealer malware to extract login details, session cookies, and saved credentials from compromised devices or endpoints. 

Infostealers can lurk inside files or software, quietly exfiltrating sensitive data in the background, often without triggering any alerts. This data may wind up on a dark web marketplace, where it will be auctioned to the highest bidder or used directly by attackers to launch further exploits. 

A study found that in 2024 alone, infostealers were responsible for the theft of over 2.1 billion credentials. Without proper security measures, such as endpoint protection to detect and block suspicious activity, organizations leave themselves at a high risk of a breach. A managed detection and response (MDR) solution can help close this gap by providing 24/7 monitoring, real-time threat detection, and rapid incident response. 

Here’s what you can do to prevent credential stuffing

• Consider integrating an MDR solution 
• Rotate credentials regularly 
• Restrict access by IP and device 

Account Takeover (ATO)

An account takeover (ATO) occurs when a threat actor compromises a user’s login credentials to access their accounts. An attacker might gain access to multiple accounts using stolen credentials or API keys, allowing them to escalate privileges, move laterally, or encrypt sensitive files with ransomware. Attackers can also hijack accounts through employee devices that have been infected with malware, enabling them to harvest session tokens or authentication cookies to impersonate users. 

A study found that 83% of organizations faced at least one account takeover in the past year, with 45.5% experiencing more than five incidents. ATO attacks can spiral into more severe security breaches if third parties or former employees unknowingly still have access to cloud environments or unrevoked SaaS application accounts. 

Here’s what you can do to prevent an account takeover (ATO)

• Enforce least privilege access policies across the organization
• Revoke excessive permissions in cloud environments
• Establish a clear offboarding process when employees leave or when third parties are no longer under contract with the organization

Authentication Bypass

Traditional authentication protocols simply weren’t designed to deter attackers from bypassing weak controls. A small cloud misconfiguration, such as leaving an S3 bucket publicly accessible or failing to enforce MFA on admin accounts, can leave the door wide open to credential theft or a cloud-related identity breach. 

MSPs managing client cloud environments must weigh the risks of poor visibility across multi-tenants environments or overpermissioned service accounts without authentication boundaries or access controls in place. 

But that’s only part of the problem. 

Malicious actors can also leverage a brute force attack to steal login credentials, encryption keys, and crack passwords in a matter of minutes. 

A study conducted by the Cyber Readiness Institute found that 85% of SMBs do not require the use of MFA by their customers or their suppliers. Big mistake. Because any one of those unsecured accounts can turn into attack vectors that a malicious actor can leverage to compromise sensitive data or breach the organization. 

Here’s what you can do to prevent those attack scenarios

• Implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) 
• Regularly audit user accounts
• Enforce strong password policies from the top down 

Enabling MFA significantly reduces the likelihood of unauthorized access by a wide margin. 

Man-in-the-Middle Attack

One of the easiest ways an attacker can steal your identity is by intercepting communication through a Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attack. Remote employees are at the highest risk for a MitM attack whenever they connect to the company network over a public hotspot or use an unsecured Wi-Fi network. 

While they might be enjoying their espresso at a local café, an attacker might be silently lurking around, deploying malware infostealers or going through proprietary IP without raising any alerts to your security team. The attacker can simply clone the local Wi-Fi with an evil twin, which is a rogue access point that mimics the legitimate network to trick users into connecting, where they have full visibility and control over any unencrypted data transmitted over the network.

Here’s what you can do to prevent an MITM attack: 

• Enforce Bring Your Own Devices (BYOD) policies across the organization
• Use strong encryption protocols for all internal and external communications
• Deploy an Identity Threat Detection & Response (ITDR) solution with real-time monitoring and automated threat coverage, such as Guardz

Prevent Identity-Related Threats with Guardz ITDR

Prevent identity-related threats with Guardz. 

Guardz ITDR correlates risky findings from configurations, logins, mailboxes, and other log activity to expose complex identity attacks that would otherwise evade detection. 

Monitor behavioral anomalies and any suspicious patterns that might be an early indicator of a potential breach in progress. Visualize the full attack path and turn identity signals into real-time, AI detections with expert-led response.

Don’t leave a single user account or identity exposed.

Book a demo today and learn how Guardz ITDR can help secure your perimeter.