MFA verifies who logged in. It has no idea what they do next.
Every MFA check passed. Every login was legitimate. The compliance dashboard was green across every identity control. And the attacker was already inside, moving laterally through Active Directory with a valid session token, escalating privileges on a trajectory toward the domain controller.
This is the scenario playing out inside enterprises that invested heavily in authentication and assumed the job was done. The credential was real. The multi-factor challenge was answered correctly. The system performed exactly as designed. It authenticated the user at the front door and never looked again. The breach didn't bypass MFA. It started after MFA succeeded.
Authentication proves identity at a single point in time. Then it goes blind. Everything that follows, the lateral movement, the privilege escalation, the quiet exfiltration through Active Directory, falls outside what MFA was ever designed to see.
A CIO found the gap in production
Alex Philips, CIO at NOV, identified the...
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