With numerous reported cases of data theft & security breaches across industries, businesses have cybersecurity on their priority list. External threats require a proactive stance, but it’s high time for businesses to take internal security concerns and insider threats seriously. A considerable number of data breaches, in many notable cases, can be traced back to internal users. While access management is a big concern in general, businesses have no choice but to focus on more on privileged accounts, or super users. IT admins, network administrators, teams that look into IT-environment testing have access to critical systems and applications, and these users are often on the frontline of ensuring cybersecurity. That’s exactly where privileged account management, also called privileged access management or simply PAM, comes in the picture.
The need for PAM tools
Today, most of the reliable Access Governance & Identity Management suites focus on PAM as one of the core objectives. PAM is designed to protect a business from misuse of privileged access rights. The misuse is often unintentional and accidental, but there are instances, where these ‘super users’ have deliberately tried to mismanage and benefit from privileged access granted to them. For complex IT environments that rely on both cloud and on-premise solutions, PAM is no more a choice. As hybrid and complex hybrid IT environments get, the different is to manage these privileged access rights, unless there is a proper system for access management in place.
How can PAM tools help?
The purpose of using a Privileged Access Management (PAM) suite is to establish a clear and transparent means to handle all privilege accounts. The management will be able to manage, modify, edit, and update access rights to critical systems and applications, as and when required, and they can also act flexibly but in a timely manner to allow other users get privileged access rights, so as to do specific jobs. It also makes privileged users more responsible and in charge of the information that they access, and it is easier to manage multiple users across different heterogeneous environments and systems. PAM also paves its way for audit trail, which can come in handy, not merely for investigation, but also for compliance.
Most businesses are dealing with numerous super users and admins, and keeping everything in check and in accordance to compliance needs is not a choice. Privileged Access Management (PAM) is the way to go for every company out there.
