Enterprise security teams are navigating a seismic shift in how attacks unfold. As organizations adopt more cloud and SaaS platforms, identity – not the network – has become the primary attack surface to defend. Attackers increasingly exploit identity systems, lateral movement paths, and SaaS access tokens rather than traditional endpoints or firewalls.
To unpack what this means for modern defense strategies, Reveal Security CEO Kevin Hanes joined Terry McGraw, CEO of Cape Endeavours, for a fireside chat on the realities of identity-centric security, identity-based attacks, and the growing importance of Extended ITDR (Extended Identity Threat Detection and Response). Their conversation hits the challenges today’s CISOs and SOC leaders face: identity sprawl, alert fatigue, the surge of non-human identities, and the complexity of securing hybrid and SaaS-first environments.
Watch the Full Conversation
Identity Is the New Security Battleground
“There is no perimeter anymore,” Terry explains. “Almost every organization is hybrid. The battlefield now is around identity: service accounts, privileged accounts, and how attackers move laterally through interconnected systems.”
This shift has elevated Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) – and increasingly Extended ITDR – as a core pillar of enterprise security. Traditional tools were designed to protect endpoints and networks, not the identity layer where attackers now operate.
Once adversaries compromise credentials or tokens, they can impersonate legitimate users, access SaaS and cloud applications, perform reconnaissance, and escalate privileges without triggering conventional alerts.
Kevin highlights the stakes:
“Once attackers get an identity, they can dwell, conduct recon, and achieve objectives. If you can catch that recon and stop it there, that’s a good day.”
The Rise of Non-Human Identities
Modern identity ecosystems include far more than employees. Enterprises now manage large volumes of non-human identities ranging from service accounts, APIs, automation tools, and cloud workloads to AI-driven agents.
These identities often have:
- Broad or outdated permissions
- Minimal monitoring
- Static or long-lived credentials
- Limited behavioral context
This makes them a growing target for identity-based attacks and a critical focus area for Extended ITDR platforms, which aim to provide cross-environment behavioral visibility into both human and machine identities at and after login.
Alert Fatigue: The Hidden Threat to Identity Security
SOC teams are overwhelmed by alerts and false positives generated by rule-based detection systems. Each “potentially suspicious” event must be validated, creating massive noise and rising operational risk.
Terry warns:
“If it’s a really noisy solution, you waste cycles and risk missing the legitimate problems.”
This is exactly where Extended ITDR delivers value: by correlating identity behavior across SaaS, cloud, and on-prem systems, reducing false positives, and surfacing meaningful threats quickly.
Rethinking Identity Defense with Extended ITDR
The key message from the conversation is clear:
Identity defense must evolve and Extended ITDR is central to that evolution.
To protect against modern identity threats, organizations must:
- Prioritize behavioral analytics for both identity access and post authentication activity
- Reduce alert fatigue by improving signal-to-noise ratio
- Monitor human and non-human identities consistently across environments
- Detect reconnaissance early to prevent lateral movement
- Unify identity signals across SaaS, cloud, and on-prem systems via Extended ITDR
Identity has become the dominant attack vector and defenders must adapt with visibility, context, and behavioral insight across their entire identity fabric.
