Strengthening Your Identity Posture – Why It Matters for SMBs and How Adlumin Helps

What is Identity Posture and why should SMBs care? Identity Posture refers to how well your organization manages, protects, and monitors its identity-related assets – things like user accounts, credentials, and application access. In today’s cloud-first, hybrid working environment, the identity layer has become a prime target for attackers. For SMBs, where resources are often stretched, a weak Identity Posture can open the door to credential theft, account takeover, and costly breaches. Understanding and improving Identity Posture should be a critical part of your overall cyber resilience strategy.

Why Identity Posture is a priority now

Identity-based attacks are escalating, with a significant percentage of security incidents now involving compromised credentials. Two major trends are driving this increased risk: the expanding attack surface, and the rise of non-human identities.

An expanding attack surface

The shift to cloud services and SaaS applications means more identities, more apps, and more complexity. This expansion makes it increasingly difficult for IT teams to keep track of who has access to what, creating potential security gaps that attackers can exploit. Every new user and application adds another potential entry point, broadening the attack surface your team must defend.

The rise of non-human identities (NHIs)

Beyond human users, organizations now manage a growing number of non-human identities (NHIs). These include service accounts, API tokens, automation scripts, and IoT devices. NHIs often authenticate, access data, and trigger workflows without direct human oversight, creating a significant risk that often slips under the radar.

According to Delinea Labs, modern IT environments now have an estimated 46 non-human identities for every one human identity. This means an SMB with just 200 employees could be managing over 9,200 NHIs. If these machine identities are not properly secured, they become a prime target for attackers looking to move laterally and escalate privileges within your network.

Adlumin’s Approach: Compliance as Identity Posture

Adlumin reframes compliance as a core part of identity posture. Its Compliance dashboard gives IT teams visibility into:

• Stale Accounts: Identifies accounts that haven’t been used in 30 days, helping you spot potential risks from dormant accounts.
• Stale Passwords & Passwords That Never Expire: Flags accounts with outdated passwords or those set to never expire, reducing the risk of credential-based attacks.
• Reversible Encryption: Detects accounts where passwords are stored in a way that could be easily decrypted, highlighting a critical compliance gap.
• Group Policy Violations: Surfaces accounts or settings that violate your organisation’s group policies, ensuring your identity controls are enforced consistently.

Identity Detection and Response (IDR): going beyond compliance

Adlumin doesn’t just monitor for compliance gaps, it actively detects and responds to identity threats in the following ways:

• Compromised Identity Detection: Alerts you to signs of account compromise, such as impossible travel scenarios (logins from geographically distant locations in a short time), abnormal login behaviour, or signs of credential theft. The platform also flags over-privileged users so they can be checked and brought into line with company access policies as required.
• Incident Response: Provides tools to automatically revoke access or remediate compromised accounts, reducing the window of opportunity for attackers.
• Continuous Monitoring: Identity posture isn’t static. Adlumin helps you continuously monitor for new risks as your environment evolves.

Why this matters for SMBs

For SMBs, maintaining a strong Identity Posture is crucial for survival and growth. Adlumin is designed to help SMBs do this. Created with their unique needs in mind, Adlumin delivers enterprise-grade security without requiring a large, dedicated security team. It provides four key things that are critical to helping companies manage their Identity Posture:

• Resource Efficiency: Automated detection and compliance checks mean your IT team can focus on what matters, without manual audits.
• Risk Reduction: By surfacing stale accounts, weak passwords, and policy violations, Adlumin helps you close the gaps attackers exploit most.
• Regulatory Readiness: Stay ahead of compliance requirements with clear, actionable insights into your identity landscape.
• Proactive Security: With built-in IDR, you’re not just checking boxes, you’re actively defending your business against evolving identity threats.

Take control of your Identity Posture with Adlumin

Identity Posture is no longer a “nice to have” — it’s a necessity for building a resilient business. Adlumin’s approach combines compliance monitoring with real-time identity threat detection and response, giving you the tools to protect your business, meet regulatory demands, and stay ahead of attackers. Now is the time to make identity posture a core part of your security strategy.

Book a demo to find out more about how Adlumin can help your improve your Identity Posture.

Jim Waggoner, VP of Product Management, Security, N‑able

Watch the on-demand recording of our Protecting Identities Using Adlumin Microsoft 365 Breach Prevention Masterclass, designed for MSPs and IT professionals looking to strengthen identity protection.