How to Build an Identity Firewall With the Risk Signals You Already Collect

You're jolted awake by a 2:46 AM critical alert: ransomware in production. Customer data's compromised, systems are locked, and $1 million Bitcoin demand stares back at you.

Your SIEM lit up. EDR flagged unusual file access. ITDR surfaced account anomalies. But it's too late. The attacker got in with stolen credentials, likely from a phishing email. Once authenticated, they slipped past your defenses, escalated privileges, and detonated ransomware.

The post-incident report reveals what your tools missed: the initial login.

If authentication had tapped real-time signals from your existing security stack — device compliance, threat intelligence, or login anomalies — the stolen credential could have been blocked at the login prompt, stopping the attack cold.

Why Identity Is the New Perimeter

Adversaries are increasingly focused on identities and credentials rather than fortified perimeters or servers. After all, why bother cracking a vault when you can stroll in with the keys?

That's why we're seeing:

• Phishing and credential stuffing campaigns surge
• Infostealer malware harvesting secrets en masse
• Attackers blend in as valid users; they move laterally, escalate privileges and deploy malware undetected

Why Legacy Solutions Leave Authentication Exposed

EDRs and MDMs do their jobs, but only after someone's inside. Legacy authentication doesn't see what they see.

• EDR detects malware, not malicious logins
• MDM enforces device policies, but rarely blocks risky access in real time, especially on unmanaged devices
• ITDR flags abuse, but after the attacker's in

This gap means a non-compliant device can be using a valid, stolen credential, rendering these tools as reactive rather than proactive in the security process. The result is fragmented defenses with strong parts that fail to work together at the moment it matters most — login.

Modern approaches bridge this gap by turning authentication into a context-aware decision point. Instead of just validating credentials, your identity solution should pull data from your security stack to block risky logins up front.

Make Every Login a Security Decision

Identity and security are no longer separate domains, they're converging. Modern identity platforms don't replace existing tools, they make them smarter. By pulling signals from tools you already use, like CrowdStrike, Jamf, or Intune, authentication becomes a live, risk-based decision.

For example, access can be blocked or sessions terminated based on:

• Device posture (jailbreaking, disk encryption, Zero Trust score)
• Threat intel (known CVEs, unpatched apps)
• Compliance readiness (PCI DSS, NIST 800-171)

This turns access into a live decision based on risk, not just a 'yes' or 'no' based on valid credentials.

Prevent, Don't Just Detect

Integrating these signals lets you:

• Block attackers at the door, not chase them after they're inside
• Reduce SOC workloads with automated, policy-driven enforcement
• Improve ROI on existing security tools without ripping or replacing your stack
• Eliminate audit headaches with real-time device state logged per authentication
• Reduce friction for end users, given checks occur in the background and go unnoticed

Your identity platform should act as the new security perimeter, not a silent witness to unauthorized access.

See it in action

Join Beyond Identity's upcoming webinar, Stop Risky Devices at Login, Automatically, to see a demo on how to use Crowdstrike, Intune, Defender, and more in access decisions to block insecure access attempts.

Register now!

About the Author: Sarah is the Director of Product Strategy for Beyond Identity. She co-founded a professional organization for identity practitioners called IDPro. She is a contributor to NIST 800-63-C Digital Identity Guidelines and O'Reilly's "97 Things Every Cloud Engineer Should Know." She was named one of the 25 titans of identity by Okta Ventures. She has spoken on information security at the RSA Conference, and keynoted Identiverse and Authenticate Conference. She has been quoted as an industry expert in The LA Times, Forbes, and Wired.