Privileged Access Management PAM – All You Should Know

Any modern security strategy and planning start with setting privileged access management PAM as a priority. Every system administrator and experienced cyber security consultant knows this. However, an abundance of technical terms and functionality of networking software overwhelms many ordinary users, causing business people to often ignore the importance of setting up PAM.

The MBS Techservices team decided to fix this. Today, our experts would like to talk about the importance of privileged access management for your business and what it is in simple terms.

What is PAM Privileged Access Management?

Each user account has its own capabilities, rights, and access to internal system resources. It is logical to assume that access privileges will be different for a regular marketer and CEO, and there must be someone or something in charge of setting this up. In modern realities, this is done by cyber security specialists and system administrators who are authorized to create and configure accounts under the enterprise data protection policy.

Experts distinguish three levels, among which high privileged access management is the highest level of account protection that provides complete access to all system resources and corporate data. A privileged account user can also monitor the activities of other users and interfere with the technical part of the corporate system, changing and configuring this for standard users.

Why is Privileged Access Management Important

The main privileged access management feature focuses on security and high performance. It is achieved by restricting access and allowing actions to other accounts, systems, process devices, and applications. For example, an administrator with privileged access can limit a standard user's ability to use specific software or view certain data sets. Thus, PAM allows you to:

• scale external and internal threats by reducing the area of attack;
• mitigate the invasion effects and minimize damage;
• increase the corporate system performance by distributing or reducing the workload;
• reduce risks due to accidental user errors or targeted sabotage.

Among other privileged access management benefits, we would also like to highlight the ability to provide a detailed overview, control, and audit of the actions and accesses of all users. It helps to optimize the work of the business as a whole and identify network problems on time, including data leaks and potential risks.

How to Implement Privileged Access Management

The difference between the capabilities of the administrator account and the "guest" account is probably known to most Windows and macOS users. Setting up network user accounts works on the same principle but with more options and tools to configure multiple access policies precisely and ergonomically. But what if there are more than a thousand used accounts and at least a hundred privileged ones? For this, there are specialized solutions that automate privileged access management PAM.

These can be ready-made packaged products from leading corporate software developers or customized solutions personalized to the needs of the business and chosen privileged access management strategy. You can entrust the implementation of this to both your on-site employees and invited specialists involved in the implementation and deployment of professional PAM systems. The latter choice will even be the most reasonable and practical, as experienced experts are constantly aware of current trends and know the features and functionality of the selected software thoroughly.

General Recommendations for Best Privileged Access Management

The better and more detailed your security policies and privilege enforcement rules are, the better you will be able to prevent and respond to internal and external threats. A well-established privileged access management PAM can completely close unauthorized access routes to the system, leaving only a few authorized ones, which are constantly monitored and controlled.

Of course, a specialist who installs and configures PAM for your system individually can provide you with more details and recommendations on privileged access management audit. However, some general tips can help:

• Minimize the number of privileged accounts, leaving it only to people who deserve your trust.
• Grant individual rights for different privileged accounts to avoid the concentration of all privileges in one.
• Set privileges precisely according to the tasks the account user needs to perform.
• Maintain strong privacy for privileged accounts, including solid password selection, regular password changes, and single sign-on authentication.
• Create and define a privileged gain and cancel policies to easily customize them later if you need to change access for specific tasks.

Save your data correctly, remembering that the best protection is following elementary non-disclosure rules. And for the implementation and maintenance of the technical component, you always have the MBS Technologies team.