PAM to the Rescue:
3 Common Security Scenarios
Despite the globally-increasing threat of cyber attacks, and what feels like near-daily major news reports of data breaches in our most sensitive industries, many companies still under-value cybersecurity. While the data breach fatigue is real, organizations from every sector need to ramp up their IT security practices.
Not convinced? Here are 3 common scenarios where IT security is at risk, and how Privileged Access Management (PAM) can save the day:
1.) Hybrid Architecture – It’s rare to find a business with the entirety of their IT resources migrated to the Cloud. Most have their infrastructure split between on-premises servers and cloud-hosted resources creating a mix of environments with new and legacy systems. Hybrid infrastructures involve complex and disparate systems to access and maintain with many passwords and many entry points and, therefore, a large attack surface.
Enter, PAM. A consolidated management platform streamlines privileged access control from a broad array of heterogeneous systems to one, centralized entry point. One system to log into, one administrative portal to grant and revoke rights and monitor activity, for any number of technical targets no matter where they are.
2.) External Provider Access – Your 3rd party service providers and remote employees need access to critical resources. Seen in every industry from healthcare (GE support updating MRI software) to manufacturing (maintenance of production lines) to finance (external systems administrators supporting the small in-house IT team), remote access to sensitive systems is a major point of vulnerability for business data and even for public safety, if privileged credentials fall into the wrong hands.
A well-integrated PAM solution facilitates easy and secures privileged access for employees and vendors alike, no matter where they are located. Grant access to the precise resource a user needs to access, for a specified period of time, and easily revoke access when no longer needed. With a password vault, users never need to know “root” access passwords, ensuring your systems are protected from future breaches.
3.) Insight & Audit – For many businesses, visibility into exactly what an administrator has done on a server on any given day is opaque, at best. After a data breach, following the breadcrumbs left by a malicious actor can be nearly impossible, impeding incident response and recovery. What are users doing with their privileged access to data, servers, and production lines?
PAM offers complete insight – and oversight – into exactly who does what and when on your sensitive systems. Monitor activity in real-time to ensure an immediate response in the event of unauthorized actions. Automatically terminate a session, block a command, or alert an administrator if a privileged user attempts to escalate their privileges or any unauthorized procedures. Plus, meet (and prove) compliance requirements for cybersecurity regulations like GDPR with unalterable audit trails of all privileged user sessions.
Against insider threat or outsider attack, an all-in-one PAM solution can save the day when it comes to securing and protecting critical business infrastructure. In the cloud or on the ground, on-location or remote, no matter where your resources or your IT administrators are, privileged access management facilitates secure and controlled access.
Discover more in our webinar, PAM to the Rescue: 3 Common Cybersecurity Scenarios!
