Benefits of Privileged Access Management (PAM)

Organisations implement privileged access management (PAM) to protect against the threats posed by credential theft and privilege misuse. PAM refers to a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy – comprising people, processes and technology – to control, monitor, secure and audit all human and non-human privileged identities and activities across an enterprise IT environment.

Sometimes referred to as privileged identity management (PIM) or privileged access security (PAS), PAM is grounded in the principle of least privilege, wherein users only receive the minimum levels of access required to perform their job functions. The principle of least privilege is widely considered to be a cybersecurity best practice and is a fundamental step in protecting privileged access to high-value data and assets. By enforcing the principle of least privilege, organisations can reduce the attack surface and mitigate the risk from malicious insiders or external cyber-attacks that can lead to costly data breaches.

All the time, malicious people appear looking for flaws within the companies’ systems to gain access to confidential data. This threat can be both external and internal. Therefore, organizations are increasingly looking for solutions that are truly capable of protecting this information.

Privileged accounts are created to control access to this data. This access is usually restricted only to people who hold leadership positions (high-level management) and administrators in the IT area. Other employees can obtain this information with the authorization of the company.
Although it is extremely important, proper control often ends up being flawed. Because of that, there is this need to have a tool really capable of directing, tracking, and filtering these accesses. Among the most efficient, we have PAM solutions.

In an enterprise environment, “privileged access” is a term used to designate special access or abilities above and beyond that of a standard user. Privileged access allows organizations to secure their infrastructure and applications, run business efficiently and maintain the confidentiality of sensitive data and critical infrastructure.

Privileged access can be associated with human users as well as non-human users such as applications and machine identities.

Examples of privileged access used by humans:
Super user account: A powerful account used by IT system administrators that can be used to make configurations to a system or application, add or remove users or delete data.
Domain administrative account: An account providing privileged administrative access across all workstations and servers within a network domain. These accounts are typically few in number, but they provide the most extensive and robust access across the network. The phrase “Keys to the IT Kingdom” is often used when referring to the privileged nature of some administrator accounts and systems.
Local administrative account: This account is located on an endpoint or workstation and uses a combination of a username and password. It helps people access and make changes to their local machines or devices.
Secure socket shell (SSH) key: SSH keys are heavily used access control protocols that provide direct root access to critical systems. Root is the username or account that, by default, has access to all commands and files on a Linux or other Unix-like operating system.
Emergency account: This account provides users with administrative access to secure systems in the case of an emergency. It is sometimes referred to as firecall or break glass account.
Privileged business user: Is someone who works outside of IT, but has access to sensitive systems. This could include someone who needs access to finance, human resources (HR) or marketing systems.
Examples of non-human privileged access:
Application account: A privileged account that’s specific to the application software and is typically used to administer, configure or manage access to the application software.
Service account: An account that an application or service uses to interact with the operating system. Services use these accounts to access and make changes to the operating system or the configuration
SSH key: (As outlined above). SSH keys are also used by automated processes.
Secret: Used by development and operations (DevOps) team often as a catch-all term that refers to SSH keys, application program interface (API) keys and other credentials used by DevOps teams to provide privileged access.

Lack of control over access to certain data within an enterprise can result in major disruptions, including loss of business continuity. Many adopted systems end up vulnerable due to a lack of effective supervision.

This lack of control leaves room for the leak of information, much of it sensitive, inside or outside the company. But after all, how to guarantee the privacy of these contents?

The PAM solutions turn out to be quite efficient in this case, as they use security strategies and technologies that, together, are capable of controlling privileged access.

Moreover, they restrict which users will be allowed to enter certain accounts, applications, devices, processes, and internal systems, and control them. This prevents external attacks, which can occur as a result of an employee’s lack of attention, or sharing of sensitive information within the company.

To better understand how this management is done, we made a post explaining everything about PAM solutions.

Are PAM Solutions Really Secure?

We often associate external attacks as our only risk. However, insider threats can also put an entire organisation at risk.

They are not always associated only with the people who work in a company. In this list, we can also include service providers, such as consultants, third parties and suppliers, and even former employees, who may have access to its data even after leaving the company.

Improper access can result in damage caused intentionally or accidentally. No matter the reason, in all cases the consequences can be quite bad and even irreversible.

Therefore, it is common for people to have doubts whether a PAM solution is capable of filtering these people’s access. And the answer to that question is yes! It is so secure that they are recommended by cybersecurity experts worldwide. Gartner, for example, has chosen PAM as the number-1 security project for 2 years in a row.

The PAM solution uses some features to mitigate insider and external threats. One is by protecting the credentials of your most confidential data in a central, secure vault to which few people (with permission) have access.

Privileged access can be limited so that only authorized people can consult personal customer data, trade secrets, ongoing negotiations, intellectual property, financial data, among others.

Privileged Access Management is able to direct which access each employee will have authorization. Thus, they will only be able to consult information relevant to their tasks. All of this will be controlled by the system, no matter if they are working in person or remotely.

In addition to internal data, in order to have greater control over protection against attacks, it is also possible to restrict access to external content on websites and applications that pose a certain type of threat to a company’s security.

No. Although both have the principle of controlling a company’s data, the two usually work in a complementary way, each with its own functionality.

In comparison, we can say that PAM is a little more elaborate. Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a tool used for administrators to easily manage users and legitimise access to certain company resources.

Despite that, this type of system has some gaps when it comes to privileged accounts. It is at this point that PAM becomes essential, as it works in a broader and more detailed way. This solution can inform you of everything that is being done, which sessions were started, and who is accessing certain information.

In short, a PAM solution controls everything related to this data within the company, managing to filter accessibility and ensure secure storage of all information.

Do you have any more questions on the subject? Get in touch with the SR Cloud Solutions team, as we can help you find the ideal product for your needs.

The following steps provide a framework to establish essential PAM controls to strengthen an organization’s security posture. Implementing a program that leverages these steps can help organizations achieve greater risk reduction in less time, protect their brand reputation and help satisfy security and regulatory objectives with fewer internal resources.

• Eliminate irreversible network takeover attacks. Isolate all privileged access to domain controllers and other Tier 0 and Tier1 assets and require multi-factor authentication.
• Control and secure infrastructure accounts. Place all well-known infrastructure accounts in a centrally managed, digital vault. Regularly and automatically rotate passwords after every use.
• Limit lateral movement. Completely remove all end point users from the local admins group on IT Windows workstations to stop credential theft.
• Protect credentials for third-party applications. Vault all privileged accounts used by third party applications and eliminate hardcoded credentials for commercial off-the-shelf applications.
• Manage *NIX SSH keys. Vault all SSH key-pairs on Linux and Unix production servers and rotate them on a routine basis.
• Defend DevOps secrets in the cloud and on premise. Secure all Public Cloud privileged accounts, keys and API keys. Place all credentials and secrets used by CI/CD tools such as Ansible, Jenkins and Docker in a secure vault, enabling them to be retrieved on the fly, automatically rotated and managed.
• Secure SaaS admins and privileged business users. Isolate all access to shared IDs and require multi-factor authentication.
  Invest in periodic Red Team exercises to test defenses. Validate and improve effectiveness against real world attacks.