What is ITDR (Identity Threat Detection and Response)?

Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) is a security discipline designed to detect, investigate, and respond to identity-related attacks—such as credential theft, password spraying, privilege abuse, and session hijacking—across identity providers, clouds, SaaS apps, and enterprise environments.

ITDR extends beyond traditional security approaches by continuously analyzing authentication events, access patterns, and identity behaviors. By leveraging identity telemetry, AI-driven analytics, and automated response mechanisms, ITDR enables security teams to detect and contain identity-based threats in real time.

Just as cybersecurity has evolved from Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) to Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS), it’s time for identity security to follow suit. While preventive identity security measures remain important, organizations must also invest in ITDR to address modern identity risks. This blog explores how this shift in security strategy applies to identity protection.

Man wearing glasses and a hoodie looking at a laptop in a dark room

Why Attackers Target Identities

Today’s attackers target human and non-human identities as their primary entry point into organizations. Once an identity is compromised, attackers can bypass both identity protections and resource-based defenses entirely, escalate privileges, and gain deeper access to systems. Defending against this ever-expanding attack surface becomes more challenging as the number of non-human identities grows. Common tactics include:

  • Identity Exploitation: Using methods like phishing, credential stuffing, and social engineering to steal credentials or API keys from humans (employees, contractors) and non-human entities (bots, service accounts).
  • Privilege Escalation: After compromising an identity, attackers try to escalate their access rights to gain higher-level control over systems and resources.
  • Identity Mapping: Attackers analyze identity relationships to target high-value individuals or service accounts.
  • Evasion: Attackers hide or alter their identities, making detection harder by deleting logs or creating new human and non-human identities.

The Evolving Landscape of Cybersecurity: From Prevention to Detection and Response

Cybersecurity has evolved from relying solely on firewalls to incorporating both IPS and IDS for a more balanced defense. Firewalls are aimed to prevent attacks before they happen, blocking known threats proactively. As threats became more sophisticated, IDS emerged to detect suspicious activities and alert security teams, offering better visibility. Today’s security landscape integrates both prevention and detection, with incident response playing a key role in providing a holistic defense.

Similarly, identity security must transition from a traditional focus on preventive measures like MFA, RBAC, least privilege, and strong passwords to the need for detection and response. While prevention is critical, it can’t address all identity-based threats, such as compromised credentials, password spraying, session-hijacking, MFA-bypass, NHI compromises or insider attacks. Just as network security has shifted, identity security must evolve with approaches like ITDR, which enable rapid detection and response to threats.

The Crucial Role of ITDR in Identity Security

To effectively counter these identity-based threats, organizations need a comprehensive, identity-centric security model, where Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) plays a pivotal role. ITDR solutions continuously monitor both human and non-human identities across cloud environments, SaaS applications, and Identity Providers (IDPs), ensuring any suspicious behaviors are swiftly detected and mitigated. ITDR is integral to modern identity protection for several reasons:

  • Continuous Monitoring and Behavior Analysis: ITDR systems track identity activities in real-time, flagging any abnormal behaviors, such as logins from unusual locations or atypical access patterns. This monitoring is especially critical in cloud and SaaS environments where access is dynamic and often decentralized. For example, if an identity suddenly logs into a SaaS app from an unfamiliar location or performs actions that don’t align with its normal usage, the ITDR system can flag the behavior for further investigation.
  • AI and Machine Learning for Anomaly Detection: ITDR leverages AI-driven algorithms to detect anomalous behavior at scale. For instance, if a service account begins interacting with sensitive data outside its regular scope of access, machine learning models can quickly identify this deviation, enabling security teams to take proactive action before the situation escalates.
  • Automated Threat Responses: Once suspicious activity is identified, ITDR systems can automatically trigger appropriate responses. This can include disabling a compromised account, blocking malicious IP addresses, or revoking access to prevent further damage. 
  • Integration with IAM and SIEM Systems: ITDR integrates seamlessly with IAM and SIEM systems, enabling security teams to have a comprehensive view of identity-related risks. By pulling identity activity data from these systems, ITDR can offer more context to security alerts, improve detection accuracy, and speed up incident response times.

This identity-centric approach positions ITDR as a critical element in securing not just individual identities, but the broader infrastructure. As more organizations adopt cloud services, SaaS apps, and rely on IDPs for authentication and access control, ITDR becomes indispensable for maintaining control over an organization’s most valuable assets—its identities.

Automating Identity Attribution and Telemetry: The Foundation of ITDR

While ITDR provides the framework for monitoring and responding to identity threats, its effectiveness relies heavily on accurate identity attribution and comprehensive telemetry. To detect, investigate, and respond to identity-centric attacks efficiently, organizations must first establish a system that associates every action in their digital infrastructure with a specific identity.

Identity attribution involves associating every operation—whether it’s a human accessing a SaaS application, a bot interacting with a cloud service, or an API making an automated request—with a distinct identity. This foundational step ensures that every action can be traced back to an individual or service, enabling deeper insights into behavior and access patterns.

Once identity attribution is correctly implemented, it forms the basis for telemetry—the detailed activity dataset that tracks what each identity is doing across systems. Identity telemetry provides security teams with the data they need to understand how identities behave in the system, making it easier to spot deviations from the norm that could indicate malicious activity.

The combination of identity attribution and telemetry is what makes ITDR so powerful. With accurate identity telemetry, ITDR solutions can:

  • Enhance Threat Detection: By having a complete view of identity activity across cloud, SaaS, and IDP platforms, ITDR systems can identify when an identity begins acting outside its normal scope. For example, if an employee’s account starts querying data from sensitive departments it usually doesn’t access, this would trigger an alert.
  • Accelerate Investigations: With all actions tied to a specific identity, investigations become more straightforward. Security teams can retrace the steps of a compromised identity and understand how the attack unfolded—whether through a phishing campaign, credential stuffing, or other methods. This leads to faster containment and remediation.
  • Proactive Threat Hunting: Security teams can use identity telemetry to proactively hunt for indicators of compromise (IoC) that may suggest an attacker is already operating within the network. This is particularly valuable in clouds, SaaS, and IDPs, where identities might access a large number of services and data points that traditional defense mechanisms might overlook.
  • Automated Responses: Leveraging identity telemetry allows ITDR systems to initiate automated responses to suspicious activities. For instance, if a service account’s behavior deviates from the norm (e.g., accessing financial data), the system can immediately lock the account and alert security teams to prevent further damage.

The automation of identity attribution and telemetry also allows for a continuous loop of detection, investigation, and response, ensuring organizations can stay ahead of attackers and prevent widespread damage.

Man standing in front of whiteboard holding paper

Why ITDR is Crucial NOW

The rapid growth of identities across clouds, SaaS applications, and the rise of AI-driven automation have significantly expanded the attack surface. As a result, breaches like credential stuffing, phishing, non-human identity (NHI) compromise, and account takeovers are becoming more frequent and sophisticated. The latest high-profile incidents underscore the urgent need for ITDR solutions, which can protect both human identities and automated systems. ITDR is particularly vital for securing cloud environments and SaaS applications—where identities are often the only line of defense against unauthorized access to critical data and systems. In such environments, compromised identities can lead to breaches that bypass traditional defenses. Furthermore, many modern organizations rely on IDPs for authentication and authorization, and ITDR plays an integral role in monitoring and safeguarding these centralized identity systems.

ITDR’s real-time monitoring, anomaly detection, and automated responses provide more robust defense against identity-based attacks, making it an essential tool for modern cybersecurity. Organizations with ITDR will be better prepared to secure both human and non-human identities in 2025 and beyond.

Balancing Prevention, Detection, and Response

Just like the evolution of network security, identity security requires a multi-layered approach. It starts with prevention, using tools like MFA and secure access controls to guard against common threats. Next, detection plays a crucial role by monitoring identity behavior and spotting anomalies through solutions like ITDR. Finally, response ensures that organizations can quickly mitigate and investigate any suspicious activity. By combining these layers—prevention, detection, and response—organizations can better protect their identities and respond more effectively to emerging threats.

Conclusion: The Future of Identity Protection

The shift from IPS to IDS in network security mirrors the need for evolution in identity security. The growing number of identities—and the sophistication of identity-based attacks—means organizations can no longer rely solely on preventive solutions. ITDR provides real-time visibility into identity activity, enabling quicker responses to emerging threats. By securing all identities—human and non-human—and integrating with modern cloud-based platforms, SaaS applications, and identity systems, ITDR offers organizations a powerful defense against evolving attacks. 

Breez is the leading, comprehensive ITDR solution that directly addresses the critical gaps in traditional identity-based security. By algorithmically linking every operation to a specific identity, Breez provides precise identity attribution and rich identity telemetry. This enables Security teams to enhance detection, investigation, response, and threat hunting with unparalleled visibility into identity activity. Breez fills the ITDR gap, ensuring organizations can efficiently protect against modern identity-based attacks in complex clouds, SaaS apps, and IDPs.