Identity is where modern attacks and modern insider risk actually play out. Credentials get phished, sessions get hijacked, and over-permissioned accounts quietly reach data they should never touch. Identity threat detection and response, ITDR, is the discipline of catching that, and doing it without an agent on every endpoint is what makes it deployable across a real organization.
This guide covers what agentless ITDR is, why the agentless part matters, how coverage works across Okta, Microsoft Entra ID and Active Directory, and how Anzenna's identity threat detection reasons over behavior instead of firing a rule for every anomaly.
What is identity threat detection (ITDR)?
ITDR watches the identity layer, your identity providers and the SaaS, cloud and endpoint systems those identities touch, for signs that an account is compromised or being misused. It sits alongside insider risk management: an ITDR signal is only meaningful when it is weighed against who the person is, what they normally do, and what they are reaching for now.
Why "agentless" matters for ITDR
Agent-based tools ask you to install and maintain software on every laptop and server. That is slow to roll out, easy to miss, and a coverage gap the moment a device is unmanaged. An agentless approach connects to your systems through their APIs instead, so it is live in minutes, covers every identity from day one, and has nothing to drain or break on the endpoint.
The tradeoff people worry about is depth. Anzenna closes that gap by correlating signals across many sources, identity, SaaS, cloud and endpoint telemetry you already collect, so the behavioral picture is complete without a new agent.
Coverage across Okta, Entra ID and Active Directory
A real environment rarely has one identity provider. Anzenna connects agentlessly to Okta, Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) and Active Directory, plus Google Workspace, then correlates them with the downstream apps those identities use. A sign-in anomaly in Okta, a privilege change in Entra ID and a data pull in Snowflake are read as one story, not three disconnected alerts.
What agentless ITDR should detect
- Credential theft and account takeover, impossible-travel sign-ins, new-device access, and use of credentials outside your SSO.
- Session hijacking, a valid session behaving unlike the person it belongs to.
- MFA-bypass patterns, push fatigue, fallback-factor abuse and enrollment of attacker-controlled factors.
- Privilege escalation, an identity quietly acquiring access far beyond its role.
- Insider misuse in Okta and other IdPs, a legitimate user doing something a departing or disgruntled employee would do.
Detection with behavioral context, not just rules
The failure mode of most identity tooling is volume: a rule fires for every anomaly and the team drowns. Anzenna builds a 90-day behavioral baseline per identity, then its investigation agent gathers the evidence around a signal, session history, prior access, HR context, and weighs it into a single narrative with a plain-language verdict. Your analyst gets a case file to decide on, not a search to run.
How Anzenna does it
Anzenna is a fully agentless insider-risk and AI-usage-control platform. It discovers every identity, app, permission and data path across 130+ sources, reasons over behavior in context, and can revoke, quarantine or notify in one click, with a transparent audit trail a CISO can defend. Identity threats are correlated with data, SaaS and endpoint activity rather than watched in isolation, which is what turns an alert into an answer.
Frequently asked questions
Does agentless ITDR need endpoint agents?
No. Anzenna connects to Okta, Microsoft Entra ID, Active Directory, Google Workspace and downstream SaaS through their APIs, so there is nothing to install on endpoints.
Which identity providers does Anzenna cover?
Okta, Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD), Active Directory and Google Workspace, correlated with the SaaS, cloud and endpoint systems those identities touch.
Can it detect insider threats in Okta?
Yes. Anzenna watches Okta sign-ins, session and privilege changes, MFA-bypass patterns and downstream access, and reasons over that behavior against a baseline to separate a real threat from noise.
How is this different from a SIEM?
A SIEM stores and queries logs. Anzenna reasons over them, correlating identity signals into ready-to-review investigations rather than leaving you to write the query.