Privileged access management (PAM) is an essential cybersecurity practice that helps organizations protect their sensitive data and critical infrastructure by controlling access to privileged accounts. These accounts are typically used by superusers, system administrators, developers, and other IT professionals to manage and maintain IT systems and applications, as well as end user access to them.
PAM involves a set of processes, policies, and technologies designed to manage, monitor, and audit privileged access to sensitive data and systems. It helps organizations reduce the risk of data breaches, insider threats, and cyberattacks by ensuring that the right individuals have access to the right accounts.
Types of Privileged Accounts
Accounts that carry out privileged activity within an organization can include:
- Local administrative accounts: Non-personal accounts used to provide users with administrative access to make system changes and perform other ‘admin’ actions
- Break-glass accounts: Also known as emergency access accounts, used to provide non-privileged or standard users with admin access to secure systems in the case of an emergency
- Domain administrative accounts: Provide users with privileged administrative access across all the servers and workstations within a domain
- Service accounts: Local or domain accounts with privileged credentials that are used by an apps or services to interact with the operating system
- Application accounts: ** ** Used by applications to run scripts, access databases, or provision access to other apps
Components of PAM
Privileged access management typically involves several key components, including:
- Password management: This involves managing passwords for privileged accounts, including regularly changing passwords, enforcing password complexity requirements, and storing passwords securely. Implementing single-sign on (SSO) in combination with a password vault can help enforce stronger and more complex passwords.
- Access control: This involves controlling access to privileged accounts based on the principle of least privilege. Access control policies should be based on the specific job functions and responsibilities of individuals. An example of this is the use of role-based access controls (RBAC) to ensure that users only have the access rights necessary to carry out their job functions.
- Monitoring and auditing: This involves monitoring and auditing privileged access to sensitive data and systems to detect potential threats or breaches. It also involves reviewing access logs and analyzing user behavior to identify anomalies, unauthorized access, or suspicious activities.
Benefits of PAM
The more privilege and access a company’s users have to critical resources, the greater the potential for that company to be exploited by hackers. Implementing privileged access management can not only limit the likelihood of a breach occurring, but also reduce the scope of attacks should a breach occur.
The benefits of PAM include:
- Reduced attack surface: Using PAM solutions for restricting privileges for end users reduces the extent to which pathways for exploitation are made available to bad actors.
- Enhanced operational efficiency: Implementing a centralized platform for privilege management can prove extremely useful for administrators,significantly cutting down the time spent on auditing user privilege and remote access management.
- Achieving compliance requirements: The use of PAM tools provides admins the ability to grant and revoke access to critical infrastructure without disrupting workflows. These solutions also record privileged activity and monitor sessions to assist with auditing and compliance requirements.
- Reduced malware infection: Several forms of malware require elevated privileges for hackers to be able to successfully install them. Using PAM solutions to remove excessive privileges across the organization can prevent hackers from gaining a foothold to install such software and prevent the spread if they do manage to succeed.
Why is PAM an important security practice?
PAM is a critical security practice that helps organizations protect their sensitive data and systems by controlling and managing access, ensuring only the right user accounts have access to sensitive information. Modern IT environments span multiple platforms such as Windows, Unix, and Linux and various environments—examples include on-premises systems (Active Directory), Azure, AWS, Google Cloud —each with their own method of maintenance and management. This can lead to administration difficulties for IT and an increase in potential cyber threats.
PAM is a security best practice because it enables organizations to take a unified approach to implementing theprinciple of least privilege, reducing the risk of vulnerabilities and insider threats while meeting regulatory compliance requirements. By implementing PAM, organizations can improve their overall security posture and minimize the risk of data breaches and security risks.
How is PAM related to IGA?
Privileged Access Management (PAM) and Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) are both important security practices that are designed to help organizations control and secure access to sensitive data and systems.
IGA focuses on managing user identities, roles, and entitlements across an organization’s entire IT infrastructure. IGA solutions typically include tools for managing user identities, defining access policies, and monitoring and auditing user access across the organization.
While PAM and IGA are distinct security practices, they are closely related and often used together to provide comprehensive access management and security control. For example, PAM can be integrated with IGA solutions to provide enhanced control over privileged access, while IGA solutions can be used to manage access to critical systems and data.
By combining PAM and IGA solutions, organizations can ensure that all user permissions are managed and audited, from the most privileged accounts to the least privileged. This can help reduce the risk of data breaches, insider threats, and other security incidents, while also improving the efficiency and effectiveness of access management processes.
Go deeper → What Is IGA vs. PAM
Summary
Privileged access management is an essential security best practice that helps organizations reduce attack surface and protect their sensitive data and critical systems by controlling access to privileged accounts and other admin accounts. PAM is closely related to IGA. When the two distinct security practices are combined, they work together to create a comprehensive and strong access control and security management system. Implementing PAM solutions allows organizations to improve their overall security posture and minimize the risk of security breaches and cyberattacks.
Get the guide → Best Practices for Privileged Access Management (PAM) for the Cloud
