With the pace of innovation so rapid, it’s sometimes easy to gloss over the fallout when things go wrong. But technology isn’t airtight, especially when it comes to cybersecurity.
To that end, numerous companies in the Cloud Wars Top 10 have grappled with security issues, including Snowflake, which reported a major data breach in May this year.
However, building cybersecurity resilience is an ongoing battle and no company is immune to attack. What sets an organization apart is how it responds. To that end, Snowflake has introduced a new security feature, mandatory multi-factor authentication (MFA).
Why Mandatory MFA?
Since the hack, Snowflake has contended that the accounts targeted were those without MFA in place. The new authentication policy enables Snowflake admins to enforce MFA for all users in a Snowflake account.
The policy follows a three-step process: prompt, enforce, and monitor. The prompt phase invokes a pop-up that prompts users that log on to Snowflake’s web interface without MFA to enable it and includes a series of guided steps to configure the security feature.
Regarding enforcement, Snowflake has enhanced its Authentication Policies which now include an option requiring mandatory MFA for all users. Admins can configure this policy, determining whether it applies solely to local users or single sign-on (SSO) users too.
Finally, the monitoring phase centers on the general availability of Snowflake Trust Center, an interface where admins can manage the risk posture of Snowflake accounts. The Trust Center Security Essentials scanner monitors accounts for MFA and network policy compliance. The feature is included in all Snowflake editions and active by default.
The Trust Center CIS Benchmarks scanner package includes further tools to measure the integrity of accounts in accordance with the CIS Snowflake Foundations Benchmark, a series of guidelines that outline the measures required for the secure configuration of Snowflake accounts. Moving forward, Snowflake will add further features to the Trust Center to boost threat detection capabilities on the platform.
Credential Theft: Still a Major Security Issue
Since the birth of the internet, credential theft has been a leading tactic for cybercriminals. Despite a long history of battling nefarious actors in this space and the multitude of measures developed to combat it, credential theft remains one of the most significant cybersecurity threats.
In fact, the 2023 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) found that 74% of data breaches include a human component. To this day, MFA is one of the best ways to secure a user account from credential theft, which is why this targeted response from Snowflake is such a positive step.
Still, it begs the question. If MFA, a relatively simple and inexpensive solution that can go a long way to securing users from one of the most prominent cybersecurity threats, why isn’t mandatory MFA a cybersecurity staple for every organization with online accounts?
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