IDENTITY THREAT DETECTION AND RESPONSE
Discover and fix identity risks before attackers find them.
End-to-End Coverage
Identity threat detection and response (ITDR) software protects against account compromise and pinpoints risks like leaked passwords before attackers can exploit them. By proactively analyzing identity systems and activity, ITDR surfaces your most at-risk identities so you can cut off threat actors' pathways.
Find and fix misconfigurations, shadow admins, and excess access across your identity systems before they become attack paths.
Detect lateral movement and privilege escalation in real time with high-confidence alerts, and act before attacks spread.
Ingest identity threat data and forensic details from active attacks into your SIEM, EDR, and SOC tools.
Risk Remediation
Proofpoint Identity Threat Defense continuously scans your identity infrastructure to find the misconfigurations and exposures that threat actors target first. Then, it ranks each risk by how easy it is to exploit and how close it is to your critical assets. You can fix issues with guided steps or let the platform clean them up automatically.
Features
See all your identity risks in one place, with scores and rankings based on real attack paths, not just raw counts.
Map the routes an attacker could take from any endpoint to your crown jewels, then shut those pathways down.
Purge cached credentials, fix misconfigurations, and strip unneeded access from client and server endpoints with no manual effort.
Find privileged accounts that your PAM tool does not manage and your team cannot see, but that attackers can fully exploit.
Rapidly check the identity security posture of a newly acquired IT setup to inform smart choices about merging systems.
Run identity checks on an ongoing basis, not just at audit time, to catch new risks as they happen.
High-Accuracy Detection
Proofpoint Identity Threat Defense catches threat actors that have breached your network with an agentless, deception-based approach. The platform also grabs forensic evidence on the spot, giving your team a full timeline of the threat actor’s activities.
Features
Deploy 75+ decoy types with no agents, sensors, or changes to your systems.
Get near-zero false positives. Any decoy contact is a true sign of compromise.
Collect attacker tools, tactics, and a full activity timeline from in-progress attacks.
See the attacker’s path, which systems they touched, and how close they got to critical assets.
Push alerts and telemetry into your existing workflows for a single, unified response process.
No software on endpoints, no performance drag, and no extra work for IT admins.
Why Proofpoint
| Capability | Traditional IAM and PAM tools | Proofpoint Identity Threat Defense |
|---|---|---|
| Identity risk visibility | Focus on identity and privileged access management rather than continuous exposure discovery | Continuously discovers identity exposures across Active Directory, Entra ID, endpoints, PAM, and other identity systems |
| Attack path analysis | Do not map attack paths between identity exposures and critical assets | Maps attack paths to critical assets and prioritizes the identity risks attackers are most likely to exploit |
| Automated risk remediation | Focus on identity administration rather than auto-remediation of identity exposures | Automatically removes exposed credentials, excess privileges, and other identity risks |
| Shadow admin detection | Manage known privileged accounts but provide limited visibility into shadow administrators | Finds hidden privileged accounts and unmanaged administrative access |
| Active threat detection | Focus on authentication and privileged access rather than detecting active identity threats | Detects lateral movement and privilege escalation with agentless deception and high-confidence alerts |
| Attack investigation | Provide identity and access records rather than attack forensics | Automatically captures forensic evidence and attacker activity timelines |
| Security operations | Rely on complementary security tools for investigation and response | Integrates identity alerts and forensic telemetry with SIEM, SOAR, and EDR workflows |
Leader and Outperformer: GigaOm Radar for Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR)
Customer Stories
"Identity Threat Defense gives us a much higher level of confidence in our security controls. It has made the overall inherent quality of protection quantifiably better."
CISO
Major Financial Institution
"Identity Threat Defense cut investigation time by two-thirds. The graphical dashboard shows us where the attacker is in relation to crown jewels. It's invaluable."
Information Security Manager
Energy Company
"I'm glad we used Identity Threat Defense. Everyone saw the value. It's a playbook we'll carry forward through the next M&A."
Director
Financial Services Company
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Recommended for You
An effective ITDR solution should reduce identity risk before a breach and detect active identity-based threats in real time. On the prevention side, it should continuously scan Active Directory and cloud identity systems to find misconfigurations, excessive privileges, and attack paths to critical assets. On the detection side, it should provide high-confidence alerts, detect lateral movement and privilege escalation, and collect forensic evidence automatically.
Look for agentless deployment, integration with SIEM and EDR tools, and coverage across on-premises and cloud identity environments, including support for M&A risk assessments.
Lateral movement in Active Directory is commonly detected using deception-based techniques, since attackers rely on built-in tools like RDP, PowerShell, and WMI that look like normal admin activity in logs. Decoy credentials and connections have no role in daily work, so any interaction with them signals a likely intruder. Proofpoint Identity Threat Defense uses decoy-based detection to surface this activity in real time, with full context on attacker behavior.
Yes. SIEM and EDR weren't built to see inside identity systems like Active Directory, so credential misuse and privilege escalation often go unflagged by either tool. ITDR closes that gap and feeds what it finds back into your existing SIEM and EDR workflows.
Shadow admin accounts are privileged accounts that fall outside your PAM tool's visibility, often created through nested group memberships, delegated permissions, or forgotten service accounts. Proofpoint Identity Threat Defense continuously scans Active Directory, Entra ID, and endpoints to surface these hidden privileged accounts, so attackers can't exploit access your team doesn't know exists.
Endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools monitor endpoint activity such as processes, file changes, and behavioral anomalies. Security information and event management (SIEM) tools aggregate logs across systems to identify patterns and potential threats. ITDR adds a layer neither one provides on its own: visibility into identity systems, credential misuse, and the attack paths between them.
Proofpoint Identity Threat Defense has been validated in more than 160 red team exercises, including attacks involving credential theft, lateral movement, and privilege escalation, with near-zero false positives. Because decoys are never used in normal operations, any interaction with one is a true signal of compromise, making alerts highly reliable. Customers report eliminating excessive privileges, gaining visibility across thousands of endpoints, and reducing investigation time through automated attack timelines.
