What is Privileged Access Management? Privileged access management (PAM) oversees requirements of critical, private accounts living in an enterprise’s IT infrastructure.
It is alternatively called "privileged identity management" (PIM), "privileged account management," or privileged session management – collectively known as PxM. A privileged user is a person who can access the administrative backend of a critical system, delete data or change settings. PAM is essential to strong security.
Privileged access management is an intensive, thorough, detailed security solution used to monitor all interactions on an enterprise ecosystem. This includes human and non-human profiles, processes, applications, and machine identities. Privileged access is a unique specification given to a “user” with rights beyond the basic normative. Likened to a zero-trust environment, privileged access management operates on a protocol of minimum privilege. Users only receive the minimum levels of access necessary to perform their assigned job functions. This best-practice ideology is essential in protecting data and minimizing opportunities for cyber attacks. Consistently utilizing a defined protocol of minimum privilege will ensure that an organization’s threat surface is minimal and that the risk of devastating cyber attacks is alleviated.
The privileged access management process is normally used as a tool for information security, and PeerSpot users look for richness in the functionality provided for oversight. Enterprises must prevent unauthorized backend system access while always adhering to compliance. Privileged Access Management safeguards aggressive data breaches and is intended to protect confidential data from the efforts of bad actors. PAM is constantly being updated to protect the security of the enterprise PeerSpot users are responsible for controlling shared frameworks and monitor authorized user access along with interim levels of permissions for privileged access within an enterprise.
IT and DevOps teams look for a number of categories necessary for Privileged Access Management, sometimes referred to as a “PAM Solution.” Requirements include life cycle and provisioning management, authorization, authentication, password management, access controls and auditing. Operating system components such as routers, switches, and firewalls all come into question with Privileged Access Management.
Functionality must meet risk management and compliance parameters. The goal is to protect, control and monitor operating systems, applications and the database. This can be achieved in part through session recording and session isolation to prevent unauthorized access, always a concern whether IT is talking about on-premises or cloud solution.
IT professionals are looking for easy to use GUI, availability of OOTB integration functionalities with other systems and availability of OOTB connectors to manage password and sessions of devices. High availability / failover to DR environment with no data loss should be provided and scalable components are key. Time is always a factor, so having the agility and ability to establish and manage simultaneous operating sessions to target devices is ideal. Ultimately, speed, coverage and security are the best ways to keep out the bad guys.
Privileged access management’s main focus is security. PAM ensures that every user interface has been properly investigated and only the appropriate users have the necessary access to sensitive, critical data environments based on their role or job function. PAM also gives security departments the ability to closely monitor all activities and identify problematic behaviors and inappropriate activities and respond to them immediately. As organizations grow, the need for varying levels of privileged access grows as well, as there are increased endpoints, devices, applications, and cloud usage that have increased the threat surface exponentially. A strong privileged access management solution will have protocols in place to detect problematic, suspicious activities immediately and stop them.
Privileged access management tools are software solutions that designate and assign specific protocols to establish effective privileged access management throughout the enterprise. A PAM tool will define security and privileged access, thereby better facilitating a secure ecosystem throughout the enterprise. PAM tools will monitor all access throughout an enterprise and identify any suspicious activity. Additionally, PAM tools will ensure all compliance regulations are being satisfied by closely monitoring all accounts, access, and privileges.
Identity access management (IAM) and privileged access management (PAM) have different, specific, defined roles, however, they do work synergistically together to keep an enterprise system safe from potential cyber attacks by minimizing the overall threat surface.
Identity access management (IAM) is a set of defined protocols used by IT and security teams to manage everyday general users throughout an enterprise. IT security teams have complete transparency and can monitor all access points, including machines, devices, applications, and all users, internally and remotely. IAM can also have a function in maintaining and protecting password management by implementing multi-step sign-in, password strength, and other types of password management (e.g. change passwords regularly, do not allow repetition of previous passwords, etc.)
PAM utilizes the information from IAM and then distributes the level of privilege based on assigned job duties, roles, and responsibilities. PAM will start with a minimum privilege assignment and, as roles and responsibilities change, redefine privilege protocols as needed.
It is important for organizations to use both IAM and PAM solutions working synchronically together to ensure threat surfaces are kept to a minimum. A synchronized, integrated solution will save an organization time and money and make managing all user access throughout the enterprise easier.
