Password Management with WALLIX PAM

Organizational security often begins with password management. Even the most basic of organizations use passwords to protect email accounts and document management solutions, while larger organizations may need to worry about HIPAA compliance, protecting industrial control systems, and more. Ensuring security with robust password management policies is key, and utilizing enterprise password management software, such as the WALLIX Bastion Password Manager, significantly simplifies this daunting task.

Privileged users and Password Management Challenges

Privileged users have complete access to all systems and data within your organization. They have the ability to change backend systems – making them highly valuable accounts for hackers. Strong passwords enforced by robust password management policies help protect these crucial accounts from being utilized incorrectly. Organizations must consider:

• Are passwords complex enough?
• Are everyone’s passwords complex enough?
• How can you be sure that a local account hasn’t been created in a hurry with a weak password?
• Are your passwords resistant over time?
• Are your passwords required to be changed on a regular basis?
• Is there anything that keeps someone from using the same password for multiple resources?

Modern best practices recommend avoiding arbitrary rotations for all users. Instead, organizations should focus on automatic rotation of privileged/shared accounts, service credentials, and keys, where compromise risk is greatest.

Why do you need Password Management

Password management helps protect your organization from breaches by:

Simplifying the implementation and enforcement of Password Best Practices

Using a password manager solution simplifies the implementation and enforcement of password and security best practices by making them essential requirements when setting up accounts. By enforcing these rules from the beginning, organizations can be sure that their most critical systems and data don’t have any unwanted visitors. Using a password manager, security teams can enforce rules like:

• Strong passwords: Easily enforce strong password use by requiring specific capitalization, number, and symbol combinations. Plus, sophisticated encryption ensures that created passwords are protected.
• No root access: Sophisticated encryption methods ensure that not even privileged users have access to root passwords, which eliminates many of the risks associated with password management and limits how easily stolen credentials can be used.
• Automatic rotation: Automatically rotate privileged and shared credentials, service accounts, and keys to ensure that old or forgotten accounts cannot be exploited.
• Access control: In the 21^st century, employees, third-party contractors, and all users need to have access to systems and passwords from wherever they may be working. A password manager enforces access control by supporting global teams while allowing security to maintain control over who has access to everything.

While many enterprises are pursuing MFA and passwordless authentication (such as FIDO2/WebAuthn) for end-user accounts, privileged credentials and shared accounts cannot be eliminated so easily. They still require vaulting, automatic rotation, and monitoring to prevent misuse. Password management therefore complements MFA and passwordless strategies, ensuring full coverage across the enterprise.

Only a robust password manager provides the proper level of password protection and ensures that password policies are applied on every single resource of an IT infrastructure.

Making it easy to reach compliance

A password manager helps organizations reach compliance for a variety of regulations like:

• SWIFT → “Ensure passwords are sufficiently resistant”
• PCI-DSS → “Requires a minimum password length (etc.)”
• NIS à “OESs are encouraged to maintain awareness by conducting regular cybersecurity assessments”
• NIS2 (EU) → Expands requirements for critical infrastructure operators, with stronger mandates for access controls, authentication, and privileged account management.
• DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act) → Enforces cybersecurity and resilience requirements for financial entities in the EU, with strict obligations around identity and access management.
• ISO/IEC 27001:2022 → Updated standard emphasizes stronger controls around identity governance, password vaulting, and privileged access monitoring.
• HIPAA → “The Security Rule requires covered entities to perform risk analysis as part of their security management processes”
• GDPR → “Supervisory authorities are expected to apply security best practices and lay out codes of conduct”

WALLIX PAM

The Password Manager within the PAM suite enables super administrators to regain control over access governance by managing password complexity and ensuring that passwords are not divulged or hijacked.

Secure your organization using robust enterprise password management software.

New features

WALLIX PAM includes new Password Manager features to support a Global Credentials Management philosophy:

• The rotation of SSH keys to support a native approach to security management
• Centralized identification management with check-in/check-out capabilities
• New plugins for credential rotation (MySQL, Juniper, ERX, Fortigate, Palo Alto)
• Up-to-date security for CHACHA20/ECC
• The support and generation of SSH certificates
• Application-to-Application Password Management (AAPM) module so servers can automatically store and extract passwords from the vault

Advanced Capabilities

All of the new capabilities support the advanced tools and features of previous versions of the WALLIX Password Manager:

• Password vault: Secure passwords and SSH keys in an encrypted vault (Algorithm AES 256) and use open architecture to integrate with other vaults.
• Advanced management: Schedule password and SSH rotation and revocation with a high level of granularity and custom workflows.
• Interoperability: The manager includes a complete library of plugins to support market standards.

Benefits of Password Manager

Utilizing enterprise password management software like the WALLIX Password Manager helps organizations:

• Meet compliance: Easily meet and stay up to date with enforcement rules for the main compliance standards.
• Reduce risk: Optimize security and reduce your organization’s overall risk exposure by maintaining complete control over all privileged accounts.
• Get real-time alerts: Get alerts in real-time to ensure your organization is protected from attacks and utilize alert data to review incidents post-mortem.
• Install easily: The WALLIX Bastion can be quickly deployed into existing security environments and can help optimize the total cost of ownership (TCO).

The Password Manager to Support Robust Security

The WALLIX Password Manager is a core component of the WALLIX Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution, which includes advanced session management and access management tools. Together, these applications give organizations complete visibility and control over all privileged user activity.

In a cloud-driven, hybrid, and compliance-heavy environment, robust enterprise password management is not just about storing credentials — it’s about enabling Zero Trust, reducing attack surfaces, and ensuring regulatory alignment.