They Have a Valid Password. How We Catch the Ghost in Your Machine.
The biggest threat to your business isn't a brute-force attack designed to break down your digital door. It’s an attacker who obtains a legitimate key, walks in quietly, and pretends to be one of your trusted employees.
This method, known as credential abuse, represents a significant and escalating threat. According to a 2025 Verizon report, it now accounts for 22% of all vulnerabilities, which is a 34% increase from the previous year.
Once an attacker steals a valid username and password, often through a phishing email or from a previous data breach, the real damage begins. They rarely cause immediate, loud destruction. Instead, they log in, look around, and move silently through your network, trying to find your most valuable data, financial systems, or trade secrets.
Your security challenge, then, is not just about protecting passwords. It's about spotting when a legitimate password is being used by an illegitimate person.
Catching a Ghost: How 24/7 Monitoring Spots a Compromise
An attacker using stolen credentials looks just like a regular employee to most automated security tools. This is why passive prevention isn't enough. You need active, 24/7 monitoring designed to spot human behavior that doesn’t add up.
This is a core function of a Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP). At AKATI Sekurity, our Security Operations Center (SOC) doesn't just watch for viruses; we watch for suspicious behavior. This allows us to flag red flags that signal a compromised account. Here’s how:
Impossible Travel Scenarios An employee logs into their account from your office, and just fifteen minutes later, the same account logs in from a server in Eastern Europe. This is physically impossible. For our SOC analysts, this is an immediate, high-priority alert that requires instant investigation.
Unusual Access Patterns Your business has rhythms. Your accounting team works with financial software; your marketing team works with creative assets. If an account from the accounting department suddenly starts trying to access sensitive engineering blueprints, that’s a deviation from the norm. It’s a classic sign that the user's credentials have been stolen and are being used by an attacker to explore your network.
Suspicious Logins and Timings An employee who always works 9-to-5 suddenly logs in at 3 AM on a Sunday. An account that has never accessed a particular critical database before tries to do so three times in five minutes. These individual events might be dismissed, but to a trained analyst watching your network around the clock, they form a pattern of potential compromise.
The AKATI Sekurity Advantage: Expert Humans, Not Just Automated Alerts
Technology is crucial for generating these alerts, but it is not enough. An automated system can easily overwhelm an internal IT team with thousands of low-level notifications, leading to the critical alert being missed.
The "managed" aspect of our MSSP service is what makes the difference. Our expert analysts provide the crucial layer of human judgment. When an alert fires, our team immediately investigates the context. Is the employee actually traveling? Is this access part of a new project?
If the activity is deemed suspicious, we take immediate action. We lock the compromised account to stop the attacker, preserve evidence for investigation, and notify your team with clear, actionable intelligence, all within minutes.
You must assume that some of your employees' credentials will eventually be compromised. The critical question is whether you will have the vigilance to notice before it’s too late.
A 24/7 MSSP partnership provides that vigilance. Contact AKATI Sekurity to learn how our Security Operations Center can protect your business from threats that are already inside your walls.
