The classic cybersecurity perimeter no longer exists. Today’s cybersecurity is a race against cybercriminals and their expanding networks that have become big business. Ransomware, malware, exploits, and social engineering techniques are constantly evolving, and damages to cybercrime victims are drastically increasing.
Security protocols and policies are designed to protect from cyberattacks, yet, as a result, can complicate employees’ daily activities. Employees hindered by cybersecurity measures may try to circumvent these processes to get their jobs done, resulting in increased risk for cyberattacks. Add lax or missing employee termination security measures, and you have a recipe for increased cybersecurity vulnerability.
It’s no wonder businesses and organizations feel like defending against external and internal digital threats is futile. It’s easy to feel helpless against such an onslaught.
This is why I am excited to share Conversational Geek’s latest eBook on Privileged Access Management (PAM) and security for privileged accounts. Authored by industry experts, it makes it easy to understand the complex nature of keeping privileged accounts safe in an evolving and expanding threat landscape.
The eBook takes you on a journey from definitions of what makes an account ‘privileged’ to the importance of discovering each one in your environment through secure password storage and more. And with a bit of humor along the way.
With 82% of breaches attributed to the human element due to stolen credentials, phishing, misuse, or an old fashion human error—securing and monitoring privileged accounts should be a prime focus.
This is where Delinea fits. Secret Server empowers Security and IT teams to secure and manage all types of privileged accounts with simplicity and sophistication. We make it easy for entire organizations to implement security for privileged accounts and protect assets. Employees circumventing security processes for privileged accounts will be a thing of the past.
Why are privileged credentials important?
Credentials for privileged accounts are the prime targets for bad actor networks. Once cybercriminals compromise a privileged account, they possess the ‘keys to your kingdom.’ The cybercriminal's goal is to steal personal data, proprietary information, and valuable assets to hold for ransom, perhaps even after they have sold them.
Cybercriminals are networking and sharing how they hack into organizations to help others to do the same. When companies don’t secure privileged access by implementing proper password complexity and rotating privileged account credentials, they make it easier for malicious associates to infiltrate. Let’s not even mention the opportunity passwords in plain text open up for the cyber criminal network.
Many companies have hundreds, even thousands, of privileged accounts. Keeping track of privileged accounts can be difficult, resulting in orphaned and vulnerable unsecured privileged accounts. It is critical to identify and secure ALL privileged accounts as you scale.
According to Microsoft, 40% of compromised accounts in a Microsoft 365 audit were found by replay attacks.
Security Mindset
As the book describes, securing Privileged Access is a mindset not to be confused with an organization’s ‘Security is Our #1 Priority’ company motto. If that motto were true, no organization would grow because IT teams would lock things down without regard for productivity, efficiency, or financial statements. It is their responsibility to keep the IT infrastructure secure. At least one of their many, many responsibilities! IT security should be viewed as a mindset the entire organization adopts together.
Make it easy for company users to access everything they need to do their jobs daily while securing access in one centralized place is possible, allowing for security, business users, and bottom-line finances to live in seamless harmony—without crazy complexity and lockdowns.
In most cases, a complete lockdown across an organization’s network is not an option. The Conversational Geek eBook walks you through what you need to account for, discover, define, vault, audit, monitor, and automate with actionable insights.
Authorize, Authenticate, and Audit
The key is making privileged credentials inaccessible and unusable to bad actors while allowing those same credentials to be accessible and usable for authorized users. Maintaining control over who can access privileged accounts, what they have access to, and monitoring what they do is critical to security and compliance. Leveraging automation ensures authorization and authentication at every entry point and monitors access to each privileged account.
Every good PAM solution should have a disaster recovery feature running in the background to meet regulations and, to be honest, basic standards. Automate as much as possible to relieve the pressure on already overtaxed IT teams.
Let’s not forget audits while we are talking about automation and compliance. Reports on everything from password rotation to who, when, and what for privileged accounts makes audits less stressful.
Wrapping it up
The staggering stats in the eBook support the need for layers of security beyond the perimeter with control at each access point to stay ahead of bad actors, secure credentials, and relieve overburdened IT teams.
The Conversational Geek eBook offers a fresh approach to Privileged Access Management and the need to understand the evolving threat landscape with humor and a smidge of ‘tech talk.’ As organizations scale and find the need to improve their security posture, it is important to adopt a solution that provides a modern and sophisticated way to quickly secure privileged access without a cumbersome implementation or expensive add-ons that won’t scale with you.
