Apr 15, 2024The Hacker NewsActive Directory / Attack Surface

To minimize the risk of privilege misuse, a trend in the privileged access management (PAM) solution market involves implementing just-in-time (JIT) privileged access. This approach to privileged identity management aims to mitigate the risks associated with prolonged high-level access by granting privileges temporarily and only when necessary, rather than providing users with continuous high-level privileges. By adopting this strategy, organizations can enhance security, minimize the window of opportunity for potential attackers and ensure that users access privileged resources only when necessary.

What is JIT and why is it important?

JIT privileged access provisioning involves granting privileged access to users on a temporary basis, aligning with the concept of least privilege. This principle provides users with only the minimum level of access required to perform their tasks, and only for the amount of time required to do so.

One of the key advantages of JIT provisioning is its ability to reduce the risk of privilege escalation and minimize the attack surface for credential-based attacks. By eliminating standing privileges, or privileges that an account possesses when not in active use, JIT provisioning restricts the window of opportunity for malicious actors to exploit these accounts. JIT provisioning disrupts attackers’ attempts at reconnaissance, as it only adds users to privileged groups when active access requests occur. This prevents attackers from identifying potential targets.

How to implement JIT provisioning with Safeguard

Safeguard, a privileged access management solution, offers robust support for JIT provisioning across multiple platforms, including Active Directory and Linux/Unix environments. With Safeguard, organizations can create regular user accounts within Active Directory, without special privileges. These accounts are then placed under Safeguard’s management, remaining in a disabled state until activated as part of an access request workflow.

When an access request is created, Safeguard automatically activates the user account, adds it to designated privileged groups, such as Domain Admins, and grants the necessary access rights to the account. Once the access request is completed, either through a configured timeout period or the user checking credentials back in, the user account is removed from privileged groups and disabled, minimizing exposure to any potential security threats.

How to enhance JIT provisioning with Active Roles

When coupled with Active Roles ARS, One Identity’s market-leading Active Directory management tool, organizations can elevate the security and customization of their JIT provisioning to even greater heights. Active Roles enables more sophisticated JIT provisioning use cases, allowing organizations to automate account activation, group membership management and Active Directory attribute synchronization.

For instance, a Safeguard access request workflow can trigger Active Roles to not only activate user accounts and assign privileges but also update virtual attributes within Active Directory and synchronize changes across the environment.

Conclusion

Just-in-Time provisioning of privileged access is a critical component of a comprehensive privileged access management strategy. By implementing JIT provisioning, organizations can reduce the risk of privilege misuse, enhance security, and ensure that users access privileged resources only when and for as long as necessary. Combining Safeguard with Active Roles allows organizations to implement robust JIT provisioning policies to strengthen security and mitigate risks.

Apr 09, 2024The Hacker NewsPrivileged Access Management

As cyber threats loom around every corner and privileged accounts become prime targets, the significance of implementing a robust Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution can’t be overstated. With organizations increasingly migrating to cloud environments, the PAM Solution Market is experiencing a transformative shift toward cloud-based offerings. One Identity PAM Essentials stands out among these as a SaaS-based PAM solution that prioritizes security, manageability, and compliance.

Security-first, user-centric design

PAM Essentials boasts a user-centric and security-first design – not only prioritizing the protection of critical assets, but also ensuring a seamless user experience. By providing privileged sessions and access controls, PAM Essentials mitigates the heightened risks associated with unauthorized users, safeguarding critical data against potential breaches. Designed for ease of use, it ensures that robust security does not come at the expense of usability.

Simplified PAM approach with full visibility

One of the standout features of PAM Essentials is its simplified PAM approach, coupled with full visibility. Unlike traditional on-premises PAM solutions, PAM Essentials eliminates unnecessary complexities and the need for additional infrastructure investments. This streamlined approach not only reduces operational overhead but also provides organizations with comprehensive visibility into privileged access activities, facilitating proactive threat detection and mitigation.

Cost-effective and compliant

In today’s regulatory landscape, compliance is non-negotiable. PAM Essentials aids organizations in meeting compliance and industry-specific standards, ensuring adherence to regulatory requirements and enabling them to fulfill cyber insurance requirements. Its cost-effectiveness creates significant savings for businesses, eliminating the need for costly infrastructure and resource allocations associated with traditional PAM solutions.

Cloud-native architecture for scalability and flexibility

Built on a cloud-native architecture, PAM Essentials offers unparalleled scalability, flexibility and accessibility. This ensures seamless integration with cloud services, allowing organizations to adapt and scale their privileged identity management strategies in response to evolving business needs. PAM Essentials also provides a seamless experience for remote teams, enabling secure access to critical systems and resources from anywhere at any time.

Native integration and seamless experience

PAM Essential’s native integration with OneLogin access management solutions enhances its capabilities. By leveraging OneLogin’s robust identity and access management platform, PAM Essentials delivers a seamless privileged access management experience. This integration not only enhances security but also streamlines administrative tasks, improving overall operational efficiency.

Conclusion

As organizations navigate the complexities of modern cybersecurity threats and the constantly evolving digital landscape, the importance of effective Privileged Access Management cannot be overstated. PAM Essentials represents a shift in PAM tools, offering a comprehensive, cloud-native approach to security, manageability and compliance. With its user-centric design, simplified approach and seamless integration capabilities, PAM Essentials is set to redefine the future of Privileged Access Management, empowering organizations to safeguard their most critical assets.

Feb 28, 2024The Hacker NewsZero Trust / Cyber Threat

Traditional perimeter-based security has become costly and ineffective. As a result, communications security between people, systems, and networks is more important than blocking access with firewalls. On top of that, most cybersecurity risks are caused by just a few superusers – typically one out of 200 users. There’s a company aiming to fix the gap between traditional PAM and IdM solutions and secure your one out of 200 users – SSH Communications Security.

Your Privileged Access Management (PAM) and Identity Management (IdM) should work hand in hand to secure your users’ access and identities – regular users and privileged users alike. But traditional solutions struggle to achieve that.

Microsoft Entra manages all identities and basic-level access. With increasing criticality of targets and data, the session duration decreases, and additional protection is necessary. That’s where SSH Communications Security helps

Let’s look at what organizations need to understand about PAM and IdM and how you can bridge and future-proof your PAM and IdM.

PIM, PAM, IAM – you need all three of them

Privileged Identity Management (PIM), Privileged Access Management (PAM), and Identity and Access Management (IAM) – all three are closely connected, and you need all three of them to effectively manage and secure your digital identities, users and access.

Let’s quickly review what PIM, PAM, and IAM focus on:

Not all digital identities are created equal – superusers need super protection

Think about this: Your typical user probably needs access to regular office tools, like your CRM or M365. They don’t need access to any of your critical assets.

The identity verification process should correspond to this. A regular user needs to be verified with strong authentication methods, e.g. Microsoft Entra ID, but there’s usually no need to go beyond that.

These typical users form the majority of your users, up to 99,5% of them.

On the other hand, you have your privileged high-impact users – there’s only a small number of them (typically around one in 200 users), but the power and risks they carry are huge because they can access your critical data, databases, infrastructures, and networks.

Similarly, appropriate identity verification procedures should apply. In the case of your high-impact users, you need access controls that go beyond strong identity-based authentication.

Enter the Zero Trust – Borderless, Passwordless, Keyless and Biometric Future

Traditional solutions are not enough to bridge your PAM and IdM. They just can’t handle the security that you need to protect your critical assets. Nor can they offer effective and future-proof security controls for access and identities of your typical users as well as high-impact users.

The future of cybersecurity is borderless, passwordless, keyless, biometric, and Zero Trust.

This means that you need a future-proof cybersecurity model with no implicitly trusted users, connections, applications, servers, or devices. On top of that, you need an additional layer of security with passwordless, keyless, and biometric authentication.

Learn the importance of implementing the passwordless and keyless approach into your cybersecurity from the whitepaper provided by SSH Communications Security. Download the whitepaper here ➜