What is privileged access management (PAM)?

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  • What is privileged access management (PAM)?

Privileged access management (PAM) is an identity security solution that helps protect organizations against cyberthreats by monitoring, detecting, and preventing unauthorized privileged access to critical resources. PAM works through a combination of people, processes, and technology and gives you visibility into who is using privileged accounts and what they are doing while they are logged in. Limiting the number of users who have access to administrative functions increases system security while additional layers of protection mitigate data breaches by threat actors.

How does privileged access management work?

A PAM solution identifies the people, processes, and technology that require privileged access and specifies the policies that apply to them. Your PAM solution must have capabilities to support the policies you establish (e.g., automated password management and multifactor authentication) and administrators should have the ability to automate the process of creating, amending, and deleting accounts. Your PAM solution should also continuously monitor sessions so you can generate reports to identify and investigate anomalies.

Two primary use cases for privileged access management are preventing credential theft and achieving compliance.

Credential theft is when a threat actor steals login information to gain access to a user’s account. After they are logged in, they can access organizational data, install malware on various devices, and gain access to higher-level systems. A PAM solution can mitigate this risk by ensuring just-in-time and just-enough access and multifactor authentication for all admin identities and accounts.

Whatever compliance standards apply to your organization, a least-privilege policy is likely required to protect sensitive data like payment or personal health information. A PAM solution also enables you to prove your compliance by generating reports of privileged user activity—who is accessing what data and why.

Additional use cases include automating the user lifecycle (i.e., account creation, provisioning, and deprovisioning), monitoring and recording privileged accounts, securing remote access, and controlling third-party access. PAM solutions can also be applied to devices (the Internet of Things), cloud environments, and DevOps projects.

The misuse of privileged access is a cybersecurity threat that can cause serious and extensive damage to any organization. A PAM solution offers robust features to help you stay ahead of this risk.

  1. Provide just-in-time access to critical resources
  2. Allow secure remote access using encrypted gateways in lieu of passwords
  3. Monitor privileged sessions to support investigative audits
  4. Analyze unusual privileged activity that might be harmful to your organization
  5. Capture privileged account events for compliance audits
  6. Generate reports on privileged user access and activity
  7. Protect DevOps with integrated password security

Types of privileged accounts

Super user accounts are privileged accounts used by administrators who have unrestricted access to files, directories, and resources. They can install software, change configurations and settings, and delete users and data.
Privileged accounts
Privileged accounts provide access and privileges beyond those of non-privileged accounts (e.g., standard user accounts and guest user accounts).
Service Account
Service accounts help applications interact with the operating system more securely.
Domain administrator accounts
Domain administrator accounts are the highest level of control in a system. These accounts have access to all workstations and servers across your domain and control system configurations, admin accounts, and group memberships.
Business privileged user accounts
Business privileged user accounts have high-level privileges based on job responsibilities.
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