Privileged accounts are present throughout the organization and often have access to PII data, financial records, health information, and many others. For attackers, privileged accounts are the holy grail. Due to the inherent nature of these accounts – with the permissions they have and the data they can access, any account that gets compromised can easily be used to expand the attack surface, compromising systems and data along the way.
How to secure privileged accounts?
- Real-time Monitoring: Users using privileged accounts to perform highly sensitive tasks or dealing with sensitive data should be under continuous monitoring. Threat analytics and SIEM tools should flag any activity that seems suspicious.
- Password Rotation: Privileged accounts should have their passwords changed frequently, including after each use. By requiring frequent changes attackers have a harder time guessing the password and in case an account is compromised passwords are not valid for long.
- Approvals: Sensitive accounts should require multiple levels of approval to access. This helps segregate duties for those who are using the account and those who control access to the account. It also increases security by requiring two or more employees to collude to steal credentials.
- Certifications: Privileged accounts should be certified periodically to ensure the right users have the right access. It also helps identify any segregation of duties violations and gives data and statistics to follow the concept of least privilege for these privileged accounts.
How you can do it?
There are a lot of Privileged Access Management (PAM), and Identity and Access Management (IAM) vendors that provide tools to manage privileged accounts. The cost of each tool, and the pros and cons of using one over the other vary. SecurDI with its seasoned professionals can help guide you through the strategy and selection process for the tools required.
Moreover, with a variety of applications and infrastructure that contain privileged accounts, one must be sure to have the right expertise required to deploy the PAM and IAM tools, perform integrations, and build custom connectors when required. SecurDI can help you do this with their expert workforce who have years of experience doing it for different clients across various industries.
Additionally, it’s not enough to just deploy the system and onboard accounts. As the enterprise grows through acquisitions, new employees joining, existing employees leaving, one must be able to update the accounts and systems with the updated information. We at SecurDI can help you do that through our talented professionals who can help you manage and operate these tools, helping you get the best value out of them.
– Authored by Navya Molugu