You can tell the story of the current state of stolen credential-based attacks in three numbers: Stolen credentials were the #1 attacker action in 2023/24, and the breach vector for 80% of web app attacks. (Source: Verizon). Cybersecurity budgets grew again in 2024, with organizations now spending almost $1,100 per user (Source: Forrester). Stolen credentials on criminal forums cost as little as $10 (Source: Verizon). Something doesn't add up. So, what's going on? In this article, we'll cover: What's contributing to the huge rise in account compromises linked to stolen creds and why existing approaches aren't working. The world of murky intelligence on stolen credentials, and how to cut through the noise to find the true positives. Recommendations for security teams to stop attackers from using stolen creds to achieve account takeover. Stolen credential-based attacks are on the rise There's clear evidence that identity attacks are now the #1 cyber threat facing organizations. The attacks on Snowflake customers in 2024 collectively constituted the biggest cyber security event of the year in terms of the number of organizations and individuals affected (at least, if you exclude CrowdStrike causing a worldwide outage in July) — certainly, it was the largest perpetrated by a criminal group against commercial enterprises. It has been touted by some news outlets as "one of the biggest breaches ever." Around 165 organizations using Snowflake (a cloud-based data warehousing…Read More