The Benefits of Privileged Access Management: PAM

Having a robust cybersecurity solution in place to detect and defend against attacks is the best action your organization can take toward preventing breaches. Privileged access management (PAM) provides the features and benefits organizations need to defend themselves.

Privileged access management (PAM) is the best way to detect data breaches and defend your organization against them.

Why PAM?

PAM helps organizations protect against the accidental or deliberate misuse of privileged access by streamlining the authorization and monitoring of privileged users. Controlling and monitoring privileged user access to your most critical data and systems is the best way to prevent attacks. For those questioning PAM’s benefits, keep in mind that:

• 47.7% of data breaches were the result of phishing, potentially caused by users having their credentials stolen
• 9% of breaches were a result of employee negligence such as error, improper disposal, or loss
• By 2020, researchers anticipate that the average cost of a single data breach will exceed $150 million
• It takes the average organization 197 days to detect a breach
• 81% of breached victims don’t have a system in place to self-detect breaches
• In 2017 alone, almost 175 million records were exposed due to data breaches

It’s clear that organizations need a solution that prevents the most malicious attacks and protects their systems and data.

Privileged Users Are Your Biggest Risk

Privileged users have privileged accounts that give them complete access to maintain your IT infrastructure. These accounts can belong to internal or external employees allowing them to manage operating systems, network devices, applications, industrial control systems, and IoT devices. In some cases, this unrestricted access gives users the power to cover up any modifications or changes they made to the system – a useful trick for cybercriminals.

The non-restrictive access of privileged accounts makes them valuable to cybercriminals.

Due to their high-level access, privileged accounts are extremely valuable to hackers. They can steal credentials using malware or phishing techniques and then slip into your infrastructure undetected, wreaking havoc on your most critical systems and data.

Managing Privileged Account Security is Challenging

The constantly changing nature of large enterprise organizations makes managing privileged accounts particularly challenging. Organizations must be able to adapt to new devices, applications, technologies, and employees, while ensuring security remains tight. To maintain strong security, organizations need a simple way to:

• Prevent the sharing/theft of credentials
• Record the activities of privileged users
• Restrict privileged users’ activities to only those required for their jobs
• Provide temporary access to systems or a tool that allows for the instant revocation of permissions

Privileged Access Management Benefits

PAM makes managing your changing IT infrastructure simple, providing you with the tools you need to restrict, revoke, and monitor access. PAM consists of three main components: an access manager, a session manager, and a password manager. All three components work together to provide you with the PAM benefits you need to keep your organization protected.

Access Management

Access management allows administrators to view exactly who is accessing systems and data so they can detect vulnerabilities and prevent threats. It provides all users with a centralized solution using a single https access point (to reduce the potential attack surface area) to access all the systems and data they need.

The WALLIX PAM Access Manager provides admins with a customizable admin portal that allows them to control access to all WALLIX Bastions. It supports a scalable multi-tenant architecture that can easily integrate with your existing security solutions and adapt as your organizations grows. It also includes audit and compliance tools that create an unalterable audit trail that collects script and session metadata in video-like recordings.

Benefits:

• Manage and secure all access from a central location
• Quick deployment with little operational interruption
• Adapts to existing security solutions allowing you to leverage all their capabilities
• Supports advanced research and search using optical character recognition (OCR) technology throughout your Bastions
• Easily meet compliance regulations

Session Management

Session management helps administrators control access to system in real time. It integrates into your other security tools such as security information and event management (SIEM) systems, security automation and orchestration (SAO) solutions, and intrusion detection systems (IDS) to identify and stop attacks as they occur.

It also includes an unalterable audit trail to simplify compliance. Administrators are alerted when suspicious activity occurs or when privileged users perform forbidden actions. The sessions can then either be manually terminated by administrators or the session manager can do it automatically.

Benefits:

• Improve incident response by coupling automatic response and mitigation with human control
• Monitor, audit, and completely control privileges
• Prevent attacks from insiders, privileged account escalation, and third-party access issues
• Easily prove regulatory compliance

Password Manager

The WALLIX Password Manager supports the implementation of password best practices and ensures all passwords are encrypted in a secure vault. One of the biggest insider risks arises from the sharing, escalation, or misuse of privileged credentials. Ensuring password security is the easiest way to combat the problem.

A password manager eliminates direct access to critical systems, significantly reducing the potential attack footprint.

Administrators can easily automate the management and cycling of passwords, while also having complete control and tracking across all credentials. Plus, certification of passwords is ensured even as your password manager integrates with other systems.

Benefits:

• Optimize security
• Reduce risk exposure
• Review alerts in real-time

The WALLIX Bastion: A Complete PAM Solution

The WALLIX Bastion is a complete solution that provides all the PAM benefits organizations need to improve security and prevent breaches. Never again be concerned about malicious insiders or stolen credentials. The WALLIX solution helps prevent these threats and stops potential breaches in their tracks.

The WALLIX Bastion is a complete PAM solution that helps you protect your organization from attack.

Get in touch to learn more about WALLIX’s comprehensive Privileged Access Management solution and its benefits.