Unfortunately we can’t control the activities of our administrators with an invisible Vader-like grip. And if these permissions fall into the wrong hands, even the ‘ultimate power in the universe’ of can’t save us. The threat of a security incident or critical error is very real, and it’s something that auditors are focused on. After all, some damage can be done through a standard user account, but the potential damage is much greater if the compromised account has ‘superuser’ access rights, as demonstrated in this news report excerpt.

The One Identity family of solutions includes each of the capabilities discussed in this report. It includes the breadth to cover not only your AD-centered needs but also identity governance and administration and privileged access management regardless of the location of resources – on-prem, in the cloud, or hybrid. One Identity is different from most IAM vendors, because it offers the business-centric, modular and integrated approach that has been so elusive in legacy solutions and offers the breadth missing in AD, IGA and PAM point solutions.

Privileged accounts are a necessity in any enterprise IT environment, since they enable administrators to manage the environment. But as news reports constantly remind us, granting privileged access increases the risk of a security breach, no matter what industry your organization represents. However, your organization does not have to become the next statistic.

By taking the five concrete steps outlined in this paper, you can help protect your organization from the risks inherent in privileged accounts.

One of the first things that every IT security professional need to know is that there are no “silver bullets” in this field. Defense in depth is one of the oldest IT security concepts. Its main point is that “layered security mechanisms increase security of the system as a whole. If an attack causes one security mechanism to fail, other mechanisms may still provide the necessary security to protect the system. Behavioral biometrics methods, such as keystroke dynamics or mouse movement analysis are ideal additional layers of defense. Besides the usual preventive security systems, such as firewalls or security doors, enterprises can introduce these solutions easily, without subjecting their employees to obtrusive analyses. More importantly, these provide results in real- time, able to monitor the activities of users continuously and accurately enough to avoid false alerts.

One Identity Safeguard for Privileged Analytics integrates data from our session management solution, with a variety of logs and contextual data points. Our thirteen algorithms scrutinize seventeen behavioral characteristics generating user behavior profiles for each individual privileged user that are continually adjusted using machine learning.

Identity and access management (IAM) – which exists to ensure that the right people can get to the right resources and that you can prove they are doing it right – is the most effective, and proactive, tool in the fight against breaches. Once the basics discussed earlier are satisfied, IAM will provide the biggest security bang for the buck. After all, a breach is nothing more than the wrong person getting their hands on something they shouldn’t, and you don’t find out about it until it’s too late.

This ebook will address various facets of IAM, how they play in breach prevention, and some detail on technology solutions from One Identity.