The term ‘privileged access’ (sometimes referred to as ‘privilege account’) is a hot topic lately. Nearly every day, it seems that there is news of another data breach that is eventually tied to the misuse of or poorly protected privilege account credentials. Both of these conditions make it relatively easy for bad actors to gain access to steal sensitive data. Unfortunately, it often takes months – or even years – to detect and then investigate these incidents. By then, the thief and data are long gone.
So, how do you determine which resources are privileged, and how to do you track and control which individuals in your company have access to them?
The access control of these privilege accounts has long been fulfilled by Privilege Account Management (PAM) technologies. However, traditional PAM technologies often are siloed or standalone solutions. Traditionally, organizations will also have a separate identity governance and administration (IGA) solution that is only focused on controlling permissions and monitoring the activities of regular (non-privileged) users. The two systems typically are not integrated (for many reasons, integration may not have been possible), thus significantly hampering control, monitoring and governance of privileged users and their access to privileged resources.
However, with modern IGA and PAM technologies (such as those available from One Identity), there’s no reason why you shouldn’t get a high-definition view of all your identities and rights, from standard-user to privileged users. See how One Identity’s Privileged Account Governance (PAG) module bridges the security and management gap between IGA and PAM. This module is part of the One Identity Manager offering, which provides identity governance and administration (IGA) solution.
Organizations that still operate privileged access management (PAM) and identity governance and administration (IGA) technologies as separate systems cannot perform a number of critical functions that impact their security, including:
- Applying identity-provisioning process to privilege accounts
- Enforcing cohesive access policies across target systems and platforms
- Taking advantage of modern governance capabilities
When these systems are run independently, you are unable to get a 360-degree view of your identities and their associated user accounts, entitlements and activity.
Identity Manager brings the user-account provisioning and access-governance capabilities of IGA to your PAM environment to ensure that all users of privilege accounts gain and maintain the appropriate level of access.
The benefits of integrating these two solutions include:
- Creation of a central repository to manage all accounts (privilege, and non-privilege)
- Elimination of administration silos
- Unified identity lifecycle management and provisioning processes
- Simplified and centralized compliance and governance
- Consistent access-governance processes
