What Is PAM?
Privileged Access Management (PAM) is a security solution intended to control and monitor privileged access across an enterprise environment. Privileged access can range from super users, domain admin accounts, privileged user accounts, and any other account or mechanism that allows the user to have elevated permissions. Privileged access can also extend to non-human accounts like application and service accounts, SSH keys, and other secret files like API or encryption keys. Privileged accounts, credentials, and secret files are ubiquitous in modern business environments and span a plethora of services. These accounts are almost always targets that advanced attacks attempt to exploit. Having a robust PAM solution in place unifies and simplifies privileged access and helps secure the organization.
How PAM Fits Into a Mature Security Program
PAM solutions are a requirement for any mature security program or regulated company, and deliver a wide range of critical security functions to mitigate wide-ranging threats. A PAM solution allows an organization to manage account credentials and easily implement credential security policies company-wide. A central location for managing credentials makes implementing zero trust for user accounts both simple and effective across multiple services. PAM solutions also allow for centralized tracking and monitoring of privileged accounts, making both compliance and threat detection easier and more efficient. A robust PAM solution also allows organizations to manage privileged user access to cloud platforms ranging from social media to Software as a Service (SaaS), creating a one-stop shop for managing and updating privileged access.
Enforcing credential policies across an organization to ensure that unique passwords are used and regularly cycled can minimize credential stuffing threats and reduce the timeframe for bad actors to use compromised credentials. PAM solutions also enhance the implementation of zero trust and the principle of least privilege across a range of accounts and services, thus decreasing the scope of damage done by a rogue employee or compromised account. A unified PAM solution enables an organization to quickly and easily update permissions when an employee changes roles or leaves, preventing unnecessary privilege bloat and forgotten admin accounts that can be abused by attackers.
CyberArk: NuHarbor’s Trusted PAM Provider
As the industry leader in secure privileged access, CyberArk is NuHarbor’s trusted PAM provider. From on-prem to cloud to endpoint, their PAM platform has every aspect of privileged access covered.
“With CyberArk there are so many avenues to mitigate risks associated with user and system credentials,” says NuHarbor CEO Justin Fimlaid. “When you look at the breadth of the CyberArk platform, the comprehensive features, there’s so much value that it provides.”
On-Site
For on-prem PAM, CyberArk Core Privileged Access Security allows organizations to continuously discover and manage privileged accounts and credentials as well as record and monitor privileged sessions across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments. The technology enables organizations to effectively implement least privilege policies on both *NIX and Windows servers, and detect and mitigate threats on domain controllers.
Cloud
On the cloud side, CyberArk Privileged Cloud ensures privileged access management for SaaS solutions. Privileged Cloud enables organizations to discover and manage credentials, isolate sensitive credentials and sessions, and automatically record and audit privileged sessions. It can also harden SaaS applications by removing hard-coded credentials and replacing them with the ability to securely retrieve credentials from CyberArk. Additionally, Privileged Cloud can help organizations lock down and secure remote access to SaaS applications by implementing zero trust access, biometric multifactor authentication, and just-in-time provisioning for vendors.
Along with Privileged Cloud, CyberArk also offers Cloud Entitlements Manager, an AI-powered cloud security service that detects and removes excessive cloud permissions through a centralized dashboard. Cloud Entitlements Manager enables administrators to quickly identify and remediate accounts with excessive permissions and provides exposure level analysis for proactively reducing risk.
Endpoint
As the workforce grows increasingly decentralized and remote, security solutions to manage endpoint privileges are rapidly becoming necessary. CyberArk Endpoint Privilege Manager allows organizations to lock down privileges on the endpoint and prevent lateral movement. Endpoint Privilege Manager allows least privilege to be effectively implemented on endpoint user accounts and application control. The technology also features credential theft and privileged deception detection capabilities to identify attacks before lateral movement can be achieved.
Conclusion
In today’s threat landscape, PAM solutions are an excellent way to lock down an organization’s privileged access and secure accounts. CyberArk’s wide range of PAM technologies makes it both easy and efficient to manage privileged access across the cloud, endpoints, and on-site.
Interested in seeing how a PAM solution can reduce risk significantly in your organization? Join CyberArk and NuHarbor for a free demo and take your first step toward an improved security posture. Click here to register today!
