Prioritise privileged access management to mitigate cyber risk

Privileged access management (PAM) solutions aren’t a new technology, but that’s no reason to underestimate their importance or how they’ve improved. The Verizon 2023 Data Breach Investigations Report found that the top cyberattack vector is the use of stolen credentials at over 44%, which indicates privileged access security should be a top priority for any organisation.

The risks of privileged accounts

It’s alarming, but true, that many organisations have more logins and passwords for privileged accounts than they do for individual employees. Whether they’re admin, emergency, domain, application, or service accounts, their logins and passwords are all too often shared across teams or departments.

If a hacker manages to steal these kinds of privileged credentials, the consequences could be far greater than when a basic account is compromised. Not only will the bad actor be able to enter systems and applications, but they may also be able to change, add, or delete users and settings. They could even create back doors into your network.

Overprivileged users are also a major risk. Giving employees more access than they need for their work creates more points of vulnerability. Overprivileged access can be exploited by spear-phishing hackers, or by employees themselves. Even an “innocent” error by a well-meaning but overprivileged employee can lead to disaster.

Manual security strategies won’t cut it

Many organisations try to manage privileged accounts with manual processes and the enforcement of strict password policies. Perhaps they do so using a spreadsheet, or a basic password manager. Either way, this approach will soon become unwieldy. It’s also common for IT teams with strained resources to neglect updates to password managers or spreadsheets after employees leave the organisation. Leaving an ex-employee’s credentials active is like leaving a window to your data unlocked.

Even when strictly enforced, password policies alone aren’t enough to combat cyber criminals in today’s digital environment. A password can never be long or complex enough to be secure if the account info is shared. Furthermore, a password policy can’t provide an audit trail of who is accessing what, when. If a security issue arises, it will be difficult, if not impossible to determine the source.

Securing accounts with privileged access management

A quality PAM solution allows organisations to easily control all account access and permissions, mitigating cyber risk through the following capabilities:

Authorising system access

Though it’s great to block unauthorised access to servers, systems, and devices, it’s even more important to maintain control of authorised access. Your PAM solution should let you set granular controls to define which accounts can access what, when, so users only have the degree of privilege they need for their role.

Discovering accounts

The ability to find privileged accounts within the network ensures that your IT team is always aware of users, devices, default accounts, local administrators, and more. This kind of awareness can prevent accounts from being neglected or overlooked due to manual processes.

Keeping credentials hidden

A PAM solution can ensure there's no direct account access, so that privileged credentials remain hidden. With privileged credentials stored in an encrypted vault, access can be shared without users ever knowing the actual credentials. And if you don’t know something, you can’t be tricked into revealing it.

Rotating passwords

Regularly changing passwords for privileged accounts by automating new password creation means that even if a password is stolen, it won’t work for long. And with current privileged account information all going through an encrypted password vault means there’s much less chance of credentials being stolen in the first place.

Just-in-time access

When users need elevated privileges to complete a specific task, they don’t necessarily need to retain that level of access indefinitely. It’s safer to elevate privileges on a temporary basis, so the increased risk ends when the task is finished.

Monitoring, recording, and auditing

Ideally, users should only be given managed, permissions-controlled access through a PAM solution with audit log capabilities. This lets organisations monitor, record, and audit user behaviour to detect unusual activity in real time and take action before it escalates to a security issue. Keeping an unalterable log of all events and activity also makes for easier investigations in the event of a security issue, and helps organisations stay compliant with cybersecurity regulations.

Central management

The ability to manage a PAM solution from a central platform simplifies and streamlines management, updates, audits, and more. It also means you can quickly make changes that will instantly affect users, so you can take prompt action when preventative measures are needed.

Don’t let resource constraints undermine cybersecurity

Not only is it risky to cut corners on security measures that could save you millions of dollars – after all, the average global cost of a data breach was 7.2 million AUD in 2024 – but modern PAM solutions are more effective and affordable than their predecessors. Furthermore, simplifying access management and automating processes that were previously manual frees up additional IT resources while helping to prevent burnout.

Today’s PAM solutions are easy to implement, cloud-ready, and can significantly reduce cyber risk immediately after installation. Check out the Imprivata website to learn how our privileged access security solutions can help protect your systems and data.