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.

Ever have trouble remembering your password? With the rise of digital economy and social media, many people have dozens of accounts. Humans are incapable remembering strong, unique passwords for dozens of accounts. Passwords form the foundation of security from physical security such as entering a building to online security such as internet banking.

However, passwords have a fundamental flaw. They can be compromised, either stolen or in some cases, simply guessed and used to impersonate another person. Biometrics offers the possibility to recognize a person through something that is inherent to that individual.

One of the most important aspects of an identity and access management (IAM) program is the securing, management and governance of the accounts belonging to superusers — privileged accounts

Like the accounts used by regular users, these superuser accounts require access management – ensuring that admins have the access they need to do their job — and governance – ensuring that there is oversight and control over that access, often for the purpose of compliance. Unfortunately, privileged accounts have some unique idiosyncrasies that make both access management and governance difficult or impossible with traditional PAM methods.

This white paper explores the risks associated with privileged access, and explains how solutions from One Identity mitigate those risks with granular access control and accountability.

This paper is intended for CIOs, IT directors and managers, security and compliance officers, and administrators, especially those who have not established firm control over all of their organizations’ privileged user access.

This white paper will explain why privileged identities pose such a risk to enterprises, how they are compromised by attackers, how current methods fail to stop these threats, and how your organization can protect itself.

Events and breaches over the last few years have exposed, in a high-profile way, particular vulnerabilities of our modern IT environments. It’s obvious now that perimeter security alone is no longer sufficient to protect our highly dynamic, connected and mobile enterprises. Additional drivers, such as insider threats, emphasize the need to protect identities. And a key component of identity management for most organizations is Active Directory (AD). As 95 percent of enterprises rely on AD as their primary authentication mechanism, AD is a popular target for the bad guys

One of the fastest growing segments of the Identity and Access Management (IAM) market is the cloud segment. Increasingly, companies are choosing to move at least part of their security infrastructure to cloud-based solutions. Even if you still run critical IAM service on-prem, there’s a great chance you manage and integrate with cloud applications

Identity and access management (IAM) sits at the very core of effective security. But what exactly is IAM? And, how can it improve my security stance? It seems to be too complex, too broad and too expensive for my needs.

Read on to learn the answers to your questions and to see how IAM – or key aspects of it – are exactly what your organization needs.

Today, more than ever, organizations must address the proliferation of cloud-based applications. While these apps often provide convenient and flexible access for employees and customers, they also present a new set of management and security challenges for IT and line-of-business managers.

Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) administration and management includes 12 major tasks. These tasks cover a wide breadth of business needs and are not all performed solely by AD DS administrators. In fact, administrators can and should delegate several tasks to other members of their technical community, technicians, help desk personnel, even users such as team managers and administrative assistants. While delegation is a way to reduce the amount of work administrators have to do when managing AD DS infrastructures, it really only addresses one or two of the 12 tasks, for example, user and group administration as well as end point device administration. The other ten tasks can be staggering in nature — security, networked service administration, OU-Specific Management, Group Policy Object management and many more — and because of this can take up inordinate amounts of time,

To protect refugees, employees and supply transports—plus minimise costs—the Danish Refugee Council (DRC) wanted to standardise the management of Active Directory. After evaluating solution options, DRC deployed One Identity Active Roles. As a result, DRC established user templates and automated workflows for governing access for 7,000 global employees. Today, DRC can provision new users in an hour. IT staff have greater control over who can access which applications and data. And the organisation has increased staff efficiency, boosted savings and simplified regulatory compliance.

Active Directory is everywhere and Azure Active Directory (AAD), its cloud-based cousin, is quickly gaining ground. Currently, nearly ninety percent of organizations worldwide are using Active Directory (AD) for on-premises resources (aka on-prem). That represents 500 million organizations and somewhere around 10 billion daily authentications. In fact, in the world of identity and access management (IAM), AD has become unavoidable and absolutely necessary for on-prem user authentication and authorization. You have to go through AD. It’s just how it’s done. Now, mix in the cloud – and Azure AD– and your management complexity just skyrocketed – and you could be in for a world of pain, if your on-prem or cloud identity environments are not managed and synced properly.