'It's time to rethink security' warns Centrify exec

A total of 63% of confirmed data breaches involve weak, default or stolen passwords, says Verizon.

David McNeely, vice president of Product Strategy for Centrify, warns that it's time to rethink security.

McNeely says businesses are increasingly recognising that passwords are broken and users have too much access and privilege.

"Staying with the status quo is not viable because password-based security solutions are not protecting us," he says.

"For organisations to reduce the risks created by hybrid IT infrastructures, they need to move from a position of having too many passwords and too much privilege for users to a situation where all privileged access is logged and monitored as a standard procedure.

According to McNeely, essential steps in this migration include reducing silos, so that users only need to remember their network identity. Another way would be to kill off passwords by demanding Single Sign On (SSO) from vendors and developers.

"SSO enables centralised Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and adaptive access control to eliminate problems caused by self-managed passwords," explains McNeely.

"A vital step in this process is to enforce least privilege access for your systems.

He adds that organisations can reduce risk by replacing shared service accounts with the ability for an authorised employee to login with MFA to temporarily elevate their privilege.

"Centrify's vision is to provide secure access to apps and infrastructure for all users from any device. To achieve this goal and survive in a hybrid IT world, organisations need to rethink how they do security.