Nowadays, managing who has privileged access to your most critical data and systems is more important than ever. Privileged access serves as the key to your organization's most sensitive assets, making it a high-value target for malicious actors. Any misstep in securing this access might lead to privilege abuse and serious data breaches. But it's not just about defending against cybercriminals; poor management of privileged access can also result in operational disruptions, costly downtime, and non-compliance with industry regulations.
To truly master Privileged Access Management (PAM), you need more than just basic controls in place. You need a proactive, multi-layered approach that reduces risks without slowing down your operations. Let’s discuss what best practices you can use to secure your privileged accounts and stay one step ahead of potential threats.
Why is privileged access management so important?
Privileged access management is an essential pillar of a robust cybersecurity strategy for many reasons. PAM helps limit access to the most critical assets and define who can access them. By managing access rights and monitoring privileged user activity, organizations can significantly reduce the likelihood of privilege abuse caused by both external actors and insider threats.
Implementing robust PAM measures not only fortifies your cybersecurity but also helps you implement compliance measures required by GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, NIS2, and other critical standards, laws, and regulations. Failure to manage privileged access properly can result in steep fines, reputational damage, and non-compliance penalties, such as GDPR violations reaching up to €20 million or 4% of your organization’s annual global revenue.
Establishing effective privileged access management should be a cornerstone of your security posture. However, when implementing PAM, you may encounter some pitfalls.
Common pitfalls to avoid when implementing PAM
Here are the five things to be wary of when building an efficient PAM strategy for your business:
- Over-relying on manual processes. Manual management may work fine on a small scale but it becomes dangerous as your IT infrastructure grows. Doing too many things by hand might result in slowing down your workflows and dealing with way too many human errors.
- Implementing weak password security. Relying on weak or static passwords is like using a flimsy lock on a high-security vault. It may seem convenient, but it leaves privileged accounts vulnerable to attacks like brute-force hacking, phishing, or credential stuffing.
- Having poor privileged user management. Without effective privileged user management, you may risk losing visibility into all privileged accounts across your network. And when some privileged accounts fly under your radar, you become unaware of who exactly is using elevated access and for what purposes.
- Balancing security and productivity. Striking the right balance between strong security protocols and productivity can be tricky. If security measures are too tight, they might frustrate users, slow down operations, or even encourage users to bypass them. On the other hand, if security measures are too weak, you risk exposing your company's critical resources to unauthorized access.
- Lacking sufficient monitoring. Without real-time monitoring of privileged sessions, you might miss vital warning signs of malicious activity. This lack of oversight can make it harder for you to spot and respond to threats before they cause serious damage.
To mitigate these challenges and ensure efficient privileged access management, we offer you to adopt the following practices.
What can you do to improve your PAM?
Let's discuss what practical steps you can take to prevent unauthorized access, support compliance efforts, and properly secure your organization's most valuable assets.
Create privileged access management policies
The first step toward securing your critical assets is establishing robust PAM policies. These policies should outline who can access specific resources, the authentication mechanisms that should be used, and security measures that need to be implemented. As a reference, you can use recommendations from NIST SP 800-53 and ISO/IEC 27001.
Ensure that these policies are not just created but clearly documented, communicated to all relevant stakeholders, and consistently enforced across your entire organization. Review and update the policies regularly to stay ahead of evolving security threats and regulatory changes.
Identify all privileged accounts within your network
Over time, privileged accounts tend to accumulate across various systems, often without proper management. You can prevent this by conducting regular privileged account discovery that involves scanning your IT infrastructure to identify, onboard, and manage every single privileged account. This way, your account inventory stays current, helping you eliminate orphaned and unmanaged accounts in your network.
Implement the principle of least privilege
Applying the principle of least privilege (PoLP) is all about granting users the bare minimum access they need to do their jobs. By limiting access to what's essential, you reduce the attack surface and minimize the risk of unauthorized actions.
Assign privileges based on user roles and responsibilities, and ensure they are promptly updated when users change roles and revoked when they leave your organization.
Enforce just-in-time (JIT) approach
When it comes to sensitive assets, less is more—especially when it comes to time. The just-in-time (JIT) approach gives users temporary privileged access only when it’s absolutely necessary for specific tasks. Once the task is done, the privileges are automatically revoked, minimizing the window of risk.
Manage shared accounts
Typically, no user can be directly linked to the activity of shared accounts, which increases the risk of them being exploited for malicious activity. Whenever possible, eliminate shared accounts to ensure every action can be traced back to a specific user.
For those who have no other choice but to use shared accounts, Syteca offers secondary authentication capabilities, which allow them to identify specific users even when they are logged under a shared account.
Ensure password security
Strong password security is a cornerstone of privileged account protection. To avoid exposing your systems to unnecessary risks, enforce policies that require strong, unique passwords, regular rotation, and the immediate revocation of credentials when employees leave your organization.
To make things less stressful, you can use a dedicated password management tool. This way, you can securely store and share privileged credentials across your organization. Note that password vaults equipped with automatic rotation reduce the risk of password theft and minimize manual management errors.
Use multi-factor authentication (MFA)
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is your safety net against credential-based attacks. Implementing MFA for all users ensures that even if credentials are compromised through a cyber attack, additional verification will prevent cybercriminals from infiltrating your systems.
Monitor and record privileged sessions
Keeping an eye on privileged account activities is essential to spot unauthorized or unusual behavior before it turns into a security incident. Real-time monitoring of privileged sessions allows you to view, record, and even stop malicious activities as they happen.
Monitoring tools with alert systems ensure that anomalies trigger your immediate attention, while session recordings and detailed logs help you track user actions, investigate incidents, and meet compliance requirements.
Secure third-party access
Privileged access to your systems isn't something that only your employees need and get. Your vendors, contractors, and other third parties can also require access to critical systems and sensitive data. To mitigate the risks associated with external collaborations, implement strict access controls, including session monitoring and limited permissions tailored to specific tasks. By enforcing minimum necessary access for third parties, you reduce the potential vulnerabilities that come with giving outsiders access to your systems.
Deploy a dedicated PAM solution
Centralized control over privileged accounts is vital, and deploying a dedicated PAM solution is the easiest way to achieve it. A PAM solution automates key tasks like password rotation, session monitoring, and access provisioning, significantly reducing the risks associated with manual management.
With real-time insights into who has access to what and when, a PAM solution not only strengthens your overall security posture but also offers the visibility you need to detect and respond to potential threats before they escalate.
How Syteca streamlines the PAM process
Syteca, formerly Ekran System, is a comprehensive cybersecurity platform that empowers you to control access to organizational endpoints, manage privileged account credentials, and monitor every interaction of privileged users with your critical systems. All while maintaining the flow of your daily operations.
Syteca offers powerful PAM functionality like temporary access permissions, manual access approval, MFA, automated password rotation, account discovery, and integrations with ticketing systems and SSO providers to help you tailor your PAM strategy to your needs. You can explore these and other features by requesting a demo.
About the author: Ani Khachatryan, Syteca’s Chief Technology Officer, started her journey in Syteca as a test manager. In this role, she successfully renovated the testing processes and helped integrate development best practices across the company. Her strong background in testing and striving for perfection helps Ani come up with unconventional solutions to technical and operational issues, while her deep expertise in cybersecurity establishes her as an expert in the industry.
Ani Khachatryan — Chief Technology Officer at Syteca https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD1jjruua8Unin7eZyr68NvZoyYmB3tKC9RrD2bkzGNzaN2N_mxRNCFeSyiPlN2ajF3Q1yENwPN6rzzxwBj3f1XfXZYD97N99G9_b_G9EekAXG1GcrzUCMji3dvGOQY4md2T9ITgukvGFjT3aBujan_kDdW6M6Gsiel3WqEZhVGEfSwyZSWkNrkYMANQI/s100-rw-e365/Ani.png
