Five Major Pitfalls to Privileged Access due to Remote Work Culture

Protecting data is always one of the most critical issues for any enterprise. Thousands of end-users access critical information on a daily basis. Any malefactor in the IT ecosystem can wreak havoc on enterprise systems. The challenge of safeguarding enterprise data has become all the more grave with the ongoing pandemic resulting in the mobile digital workforce. Furthermore, these elevated super user accounts are also accessed by third parties, external IT staff, and consultants. The impact can be catastrophic if privileged accounts are compromised.

Here are the Five Don’ts in Remote Privileged Access

1. No rule and role-based access control: Without a robust unified access control mechanism, organizations always face the security challenges of authorizing and governing the privileged users based on their roles and responsibilities. Without any ‘need-to-know’ and ‘need-to-do’ basis’ access control mechanism, organizations risk unauthorized access.

2. No granular access control: No privilege user requires 24*7 access to target systems. Then why to expand the attack surface? Access to critical systems should be always granted on the ‘Least Privilege’ Principle.

3. No session monitoring: It could be a recipe for IT disaster if there is now a process to know “what is being done” and “what was asked to be done”. Poor monitoring of the end-users pushes organizations towards serious repercussions as privileged sessions conducted without an uncontrolled and un-logged environment to access data and file transfers can lead to misuse or abuse of data.

4. VPN connection: While working remotely for day-to-day IT operations confidential business information is accessed using Virtual Private Network (VPN) access. This is a huge risk. If internal or external IT users access systems using VPNs, governance and validation take a back seat. VPN connections can never provide a fine-grained access control approach to systems. Secondly, how can one know that the privileged account is accessed by a trusted ‘identity’?

5. No password vaulting and Multifactor authentication: Needless to say, poor password management (absence of password vaulting) and Privileged access devoid of several authenticating layers can lead to a data breach.

The Solution

ARCON | Privileged Access Management (PAM) is a highly mature solution built to address daily enterprise Use Cases, whether on-premises or remotely. The robust solution offers:

1. Just-in-time Privileges: The feature enables the IT security team to reduce excessive standing privileges.

2. Secure Gateway: It eliminates the need of a VPN connection as all remote access is routed through ARCON Secure Gateway, which ensures access to critical systems is not just based on validation of identities but also attributes as IP address, device used and geographical location.

3. Centralized Policy engine: The mechanism helps to create Privileged Access rules as to people and policies.

4. Password Vaulting and Multifactor Authentication: Privileged passwords are frequently changed and built-in dual-factor authentication integrates with disparate third party authentication tools.

5. Session Monitoring: The feature offers comprehensive visibility over privileged users ensuring accountability and adherence to IT security standards.

ARCON is a leading enterprise risk control solutions provider, specializing in risk-predictive technologies. ARCON | User Behaviour Analytics enables to monitor end-user activities in real time. ARCON | Privileged Access Management reinforces access control and mitigates data breach threats. ARCON | Endpoint Privilege Management mitigates risks arising out of endpoints. ARCON | Secure Compliance Management is a vulnerability assessment tool.