Modernise your Privileged Access Security

Privileged Access Security, often referred to as Privileged Access (or Account) Management, and abbreviated as PAS or PAM, can be defined as:

The principle of securing credentials deemed as critical to ongoing operations and used to access corporate IT resources, which carry risk profiles warranting the application of security controls in order to minimise the threat of disruption or theft of critical data.

In this regard, Privileged Access Security should not be viewed mainly as the implementation of a PAS or PAM technology and augmented (or integrated) with other third-party security mechanisms and platforms. PAS should be viewed, and adopted, as an ongoing service which provides increased security assurance in addition to business gains and efficiencies. 

Key to providing an effective service is understanding the policies, processes, requirements and governance to ensure that the organization – with its inherent security culture and structure – can effectively deliver and support the service. 

Of equal importance is to meet the needs and expectations of the stakeholders who use and rely upon the service, such as system administrators, application developers, security operations and governance-risk-compliance teams. Both internal stakeholders (employees, management) as well as external stakeholders (business partners, clients, third-party suppliers) should be considered when assessing stakeholder needs and expectations.

Hence, when assessing an approach to modernise your PAS service, it is best to avoid the temptation of immediately focusing on the latest technology, features and tools available on the market. Instead, start with a pragmatic review (or current-state analysis) of the organization’s policies and processes as well as its inherent security culture and structure, followed by defining the goals (or future state) for the service. 

This approach will allow you to effectively identify the changes needed (or gaps to be filled) to evolve the service to the desired future state, which delivers increased security assurance as well as business gains and efficiencies.

When viewing Privileged Access Security as primarily a service, what do you need to consider in order to modernise it?

To modernise your PAS and ensure it delivers on the business goals defined for the service, five key areas need to be assessed. 

Do the current processes and tools efficiently and reliably track privileged users who join the organization, change roles or leave the organization? Can you say with confidence that only the required level of privileged access (entitlements or permissions) is granted, in line with the user’s actual role or employment status?

Are approval levels and workflows sufficiently defined to ensure that privileged access to critical data, information and systems is enforced, monitored and audited?

By carefully analyzing how these five key areas apply to your organization, and answering surrounding questions, modernising your PAS to a future state that supports the organization’s key goals and strategy comes clearly into view. 

Armed with this insight and intelligence, you are then able to objectively look at the technologies and tools available on the market, hold meaningful, productive discussions and POCs with vendors, and ultimately arrive at a decision which applies best to your organization’s unique setup and business objectives.

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