In both our personal and professional lives, networked devices—from printers and sensors to mobile phones and microchips—have proliferated. The need for cybersecurity teams has increased.

What was previously a well-defined unambiguous perimeter has changed into an ill-defined fuzzy barrier as remote work and IoT devices challenge cybersecurity. In these shadows, cybercriminals are prospering, concentrating their efforts on key employees whose access credentials provide easy pickings.

When configured with the appropriate policies, tools, and automation, privileged access management enables you to safeguard these crucial assets.

What is Privileged Access Management?

Organizations are discovering in the modern world how crucial it is to secure accounts and assets inside their network architecture in order to reduce security breaches, avoid the loss of sensitive data, and stop unauthorised access to extremely sensitive accounts and assets. Privileged Access Management, or PAM, is a subset of cybersecurity practises that is the focus of these mitigation efforts. The PAM idea makes use of a few fundamentally important elements that balance mitigation efforts with operational efficacy. By using tested security techniques along with tools like CyberArk and BeyondTrust this balance may be achieved.

The majority of businesses adhere to the least privilege principle, which states that each user should only have the access necessary to perform their job. Only trustworthy accounts are granted administrator-style rights, including access to confidential data, changing app configurations, and adding or removing users. These user categories, who generally play technical, legal, or executive positions and require privileged access to perform their duties, are organised into groups by PAM.

Why does privileged access management matter?

Even now, a criminal who acquires access to a standard company account may be able to do serious harm. Threat actors, however, may quickly compromise your whole organisation by using the credentials of a privileged account, whether it is held by HR, IT, or the C-suite.

Privilege access management can assist organisations in quickly neutralising this emerging danger by placing stricter restrictions on the access and behaviour of individuals with strong credentials.

Crucial Points to consider while implementing Privileged Access Management

Implementing a Privileged Access Management (PAM) system involves the following crucial steps:

• Select a PAM solution that is appropriate for your organisation.
• The integration of PAM with existing infrastructure (including cloud services) and security policies such as least privilege (basically a prerequisite) or zero trust is important to consider.
• Include privileged access and application controls in vulnerability management and risk evaluations. This is done so that PAM policies may be implemented to reduce risks if an application has a high risk of real-world threats, malware, or a lack of security upgrades.
• When integrating PAM into their security posture, businesses should constantly look beyond workstations and servers in terms of privileged access.
• Network devices are frequently set up to utilise shared account credentials or default account credentials. Consider keeping the length of password not too lengthy as the length of passwords of Network Devices raises the possibility of network equipment being compromised and abused.
• Create rules to decrease the risks to these accounts. For example, you might use MFA to lower the chance of successful password assaults or keep a log of all privileged sessions to help you spot risky usage patterns.
• Unified Management entails keeping an eye on users’ activity and determining the dangers they offer to a company. This type of monitoring is commonly referred to as Privileged Threat Analytics in PAM (PTA). The majority of contemporary PAM systems use machine learning to track common user activities, calculate a risk score, and alert internal security staff when it notices dangerous behaviour that rises over a certain threshold.
• Having all of an organization’s identity and access management tools, utilities, and services operate in concert with one another was required for identity stack integration. This entails combining privileged access security solutions, IT service management tools, Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), Multi-factor Authentication (MFA), and SIEM to tighten controls and minimise an organization’s attack surface.
• Before launching, engage important users and stakeholders.

Best practices

• Security administrators must monitor and regulate every access.

It can be advisable to onboard privileged accounts in waves so you have time to do it correctly and by platform (so you can focus on specific account types). However, you need to be sure there are no exceptions. This requires continual monitoring and inspection of your user list because if a privileged account manages to evade detection, attackers have access to the most sensitive information within your organisation.

Privilege access may actually be better handled as a transient rather than a permanent condition, where it is given for a little time and then revoked.

• Real-Time Monitoring

As the application develops, collecting user data will help you develop your policies and enable you to identify and remove unauthorised users. Here, continuous, real-time monitoring and logging are essential, and these records need to be constantly examined.

While examining these recordings can be a time-consuming effort, many systems provide visual representations of privileged behaviour. However, some PAM products feature AI algorithms that can automatically recognise and flag odd behaviour.

• For reliable PAM, use automation and tools

Automation may also be advantageous for other repetitive chores including log management, software maintenance, controlling third-party access, and straightforward configuration changes. Automation may assist maintain consistency and free up security staff to concentrate on high-level activities that require human input when utilised properly.

Identity, Governance, and Administration (IGA) tools, which are essential for the creation, upkeep, and deletion of accounts, are also included in the PAM toolkit. Change control tools may be used to manage temporary PAM access.

Conclusion

Cybercriminals are concentrating their efforts on key employees whose access credentials provide easy pickings. Privileged Access Management, or PAM, is a subset of cybersecurity practises that is the focus of these mitigation efforts. The PAM idea makes use of tested security techniques and tools like CyberArk and BeyondTrust. Privileged access management (PAM) is the process of ensuring that only those who require access to sensitive data and features are responsible for their actions. Some PAM products feature AI algorithms that can automatically recognise and flag odd behaviour.

Automation may assist maintain consistency and free up security staff to concentrate on high-level activities. Consider it as harder armour for your key tasks and consider it almost necessary to the security of your organisation.