Do you want to prevent insider threats and misuse of privileged accounts? Are you looking to protect privileged accounts from external cyber criminals? Privileged access is a necessity for every online business.
However, unauthorized access to critical systems can result in financial or legal repercussions, whether you are a small or large organization.
That’s where the privileged account management tools are pivotal for your business. The software protects online accounts from catastrophic attacks by offering complete control and continuous monitoring of sensitive data.
With the increasing sophistication of cyber-attacks, it’s important to select a privileged access management solution that meets your specific needs.
In this article, let’s understand the top features that every PAM should possess so you can choose the right PAM solution for your business requirements.
What is Privileged Access Management (PAM)?
Privileged Access Management is a security framework that helps manage and control access to critical systems and sensitive information by privileged users. These users have elevated access rights or administrative privileges, which are the primary target of cyberattackers.
Privileged accounts, such as root and service accounts, come with high authority functions, enabling actions like system configuration and network management.
To mitigate the risks, PAM ensures the accounts are managed with strict authorization protocols to prevent misuse of the accounts or exploitation of data. Robust authentication methods and appropriate security policies are applied to secure these accounts and safeguard critical systems from threats.
Why Your Organization Can’t Afford to Ignore Implementing PAM?
Does your organization handle the devastating after-effects of a data breach? At least 31%of people believe data breaches are expensive and add to your overhead.
Source: Statista.com
Even if you are the most reputed in your industry, a data breach can bring down your organization in a couple of minutes.
Having privileged access management can help you defend your company from the growing cyberattacks and prevent the effects of negligence.
Apart from heavy financial losses, you also suffer downtime and remediation, which can be irreparable to your business. You need to pay heavy regulatory fines as a result of the data breaches.
Privileged access management can prevent these financial losses by eliminating breaches and downtime for the business. Similarly, you can protect sensitive data and ensure complete regulatory compliance as a result of the management system. This would prevent the costs in the form of penalties.
For more insights on the importance of upgrading your cybersecurity, check out our post on why it’s important to upgrade cybersecurity. This will help you understand the broader context of cybersecurity improvements needed to protect your organization.
10 Key Features to Look for in PAM Software
You can secure your systems and protect them from catastrophic breaches with the right privileged access management software. Here are the top features you must look for when selecting the software solution.
1. Granular Access Control
Giving every employee the key to all your sensitive systems can become an organization’s nightmare in no time. To safeguard your system from vulnerabilities and keep the control in check, the PAM system grants granular access control.
This allows every user a role-specific control of the system. They are authorized to perform the tasks suited to their role, thus minimizing the chances of insider threats or unauthorized access to specific information.
With this access control, you will realize that the users have only essential control of the system and the visibility that the role demands. This is an important feature that helps maintain the operational efficiency.
2. Just-in-Time Access
Imagine provisioning access to users on-demand and revoking it once the task is completed. The capabilities of Just-In-Time (JIT) access in a Privileged Access Management (PAM) system are unparalleled.
There are scenarios where users with minimal or no administrative privileges need temporary access to specific data or resources. JIT access allows privileged users to obtain a single-use access token for a defined period.
JIT access minimizes the attack surface by limiting the duration and scope of access, significantly reducing the risk of data breaches. It also strengthens the security, while ensuring complete compliance with the access protocols.
3. Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
A single password is no longer effective in keeping your account safe and secure. You need to think beyond strong passwords, and that’s where multi-factor authentication is pivotal.
It can add that extra security layer, which seeks multiple verifications of the user’s role and access before allowing them inside the system.
You can add a fingerprint access or a one-time password along with the password to create extra security. Integrating this feature into your PAM system guarantees complete protection of critical assets. Learn in detail about MFA from America’s cybersecurity and infrastructure.
4. Session Management and Monitoring
What if you could catch a threat in real time before it escalates? Session management and monitoring are the exact features you need to ensure you can overcome critical oversight.
You can track and control all these activities during the privileged access sessions, which ensures real-time visibility into the privileged sessions. As a result, you can catch the issues before they grow bigger.
Using this feature, you can record and audit suspicious sessions and ensure you can prevent any security issues.
5. Automated Credential Management
If you have humans managing the privileged access credentials, you might face errors that can cost you a lot. To avoid this, you might want to automate the credential management in the privileged access management software. It can automate the creation, rotation, and even storage of these passwords, ensuring complete security and compliance.
Owing to this feature, you can reduce the risks associated with unauthorized access or credential theft. You can even simplify compliance management with this automation. It can also help keep track of all the credential changes and elevate your system’s security.
6. Threat Detection and Response
With the threat detection and response feature, you can know and neutralize the threats before they can cause more damage to the system. This feature extends real-time monitoring into the system and ensures immediate alerts that can help you find and mitigate any suspicious activity.
Advanced analytics combined with behavioral analysis together helps you detect the anomalies that can detect the unusual patterns to terminate the logged-in sessions. You can respond to the anomalies immediately using this feature.
For instance, if your SaaS products serve the financial industry, implementing a robust threat detection mechanism is essential to prevent cyberattacks. For a detailed approach to securing your SaaS applications, refer to our ultimate cybersecurity for SaaS checklist to ensure you cover all critical aspects of security.
7. Compliance and Reporting
When you can maintain the standards of your security measures, you can reduce the risks and enhance your reputation. The compliance and reporting feature helps you manage the regulatory needs of the business system and keeps it ready via regular audits.
This feature generates detailed reports of the activities related to access and keeps you updated on credential management.
You can maintain the IT security frameworks with standards, such as GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI-DSS. These would help you prevent your organization from reputation hazards or expensive penalties.
8. Remote Access Capabilities
Is your PAM system secure when it comes to remote access? By integrating the remote access feature, you can enhance the security and ensure it is not compromised when people access it from outside the organization.
The feature can control access to critical systems by robust encryption and VPN integration. It also protects remote access from unauthorized access with multi-factor authentication.
You can stay assured that the control is completely secure irrespective of where the user accesses the system.
9. Integration with Existing Security Tools
To make your PAM work seamlessly with the existing security, you must integrate the system with existing security tools. This feature will create a unified security system that will help the PAM integrate with tools like SIEM and IAM to provide a cohesive defense mechanism against all cyber attacks.
The integration will provide your team with a centralized monitoring system with streamlined workflows to offer complete visibility into the system.
10. User Experience and Management Interface
This feature ensures smooth and swift management and usability of the PAM system. It is critical in ensuring ease of access and quick responses to security issues.
The dashboards are intuitive and offer a clear visualization of the security hazards. It helps monitor the activities and respond to the threats immediately.
The low learning curve of the interface allows for productivity while minimizing the time spent on admin tasks.
These are the top features you should look for when buying a unified PAM solution. However, if you want to improve your business’s cybersecurity, these tips will help you. This article describes the top 5 robust tips that help to secure businesses from cybercrime.
Conclusion
Privileged access management software is key in ensuring role-based access and minimizing data breaches for your organization. Key features like just-in-time access, threat detection, automated credential management, and compliance reporting are crucial in safeguarding your critical systems and protecting sensitive data.
Each of these features has a distinctive role in strengthening the security posture and aligning the software with your security strategy.
Choosing the right PAM software can help create a secure and compliant environment for your business.
Why is FinancesOnline free?
Leave a comment!