How to Choose Your Privileged Access Management Solution

The use of Privileged Access Management (PAM) is increasingly recommended by cybersecurity professionals. But why do we need it in place?

Not a day goes by without a security breach or data leak making the headlines. Many organisations of all sizes and types are the target of cybercriminals. The British government noted in its press release of 30 March 2022 that:

• 31% of businesses and 26% of charities now experience breaches or attacks at least once a week.
• Two in five businesses use a managed IT provider, but only 13% review the security risks posed by their immediate suppliers.

In most cases, privileged accounts have been used by hackers, as they give access to sensitive data. A PAM solution can prevent these attacks by securing privileged access.

How to choose a Privileged Access Management solution

A PAM solution is deployed to secure privileged access for internal administrators and external service providers. Each solution on the market provides certain features — which ones should be prioritised? Here is a list of what to look for.

Keep it simple, easy to deploy and to manage

A PAM solution does not have to be time-consuming, complex to deploy and maintain, or restrictive. When choosing one, look for simplicity, speed of deployment and ease of maintenance: a solution deployable in a few clicks that does not require redesigning your current infrastructure. A key point is finding one that provides automatic updates regularly without needing to be managed by your IT team.

Choose a cost-effective solution

The licensing model is also an important point to consider. Costs can be staggered over time according to actual usage, and can include maintenance and update management.

Resilience, adaptable to different use cases

Administrator profiles have changed over the years, and keep evolving. The administrator physically present in the office and on the same network as the resources is no longer the only use case. Other profiles may be called upon to administer those resources — service providers, who by definition work remotely, or a company administrator working from home.

A PAM solution should provide a certain level of resilience for all privileged users in every possible context. The ultimate case is one where the IT system is hidden and protected behind a service platform.

Password vaulting and management

Beyond the administrator profiles above, there are former administrators who may have had knowledge of access accounts, IP addresses and the like. A password vault allows you to securely store all corporate credentials and keys. Along with password rotation and automatic injection, it prevents passwords from being disclosed to administrators at all.

Session recording and monitoring

A PAM solution should go beyond just session recording. Recording privileged sessions lets you watch in real time all actions made by administrators and interact with them. But it should also include automation features: automatically detecting and blocking suspicious activity, and quickly searching and finding suspicious actions among a great many video recordings.

Identity-based access policies

To raise the security level, advanced access control is required, based on both identity or profile and the context of the connection. Administrators should have access to the resources they need based on their profile, through pre-set policies. Depending on the organisation’s structure, user groups can be defined, so policies can be easily assigned to determine which application an administrator can reach and in which context — location, IP address and so on.

Multi-factor authentication

Say all the points above are provided; we still need to ensure the right person is behind the PC. Many organisations use multi-factor authentication solutions such as Yubico, Google Authenticator, Office 365 and others. We therefore need to make sure the PAM solution can connect to the authenticators already in place.

Scaling up the use of PAM, made easy with cyberelements.io

PAM is essential in cybersecurity for organisations of all sizes and types. It is a must for monitoring and tracing all actions made by privileged users, which have a significant impact on the IT system.

Whether your organisation relies on outsourcing or on internal human resources to administer its information system, the right PAM solution lets you seamlessly raise your security level without exceeding budget restrictions.

CyberElements is the cybersecurity platform that simplifies PAM without compromising on security. See all the functionality it provides, or watch the recording below for a quick product tour.