Privileged Identity Management Ensuring Secure Environment

Today enterprises have entered the digital world with data transfer and storage in electronic format. Technological enhancements have brought in frequent changes as well as challenges to the IT infrastructure management. For the enterprises to stand in such a competitive environment, they either upgrade their infrastructure or make use of data centers with high-end and best-of-the-breed technology.   Data centers have become the lifeline for most enterprises especially for small and medium enterprises as they can sustain themselves against the   aggressive competitive environment in a cost-effective manner.

However, in the present market scenario with the  use of the data centers run by third party providers, enterprises must ensure that data loss, identity thefts do not lead to disruption in business continuity. Resorting to efficient risk management frameworks that offers risk analysis will help ward off unwarranted business threats, leverage on opportunities and protect against adverse economic impacts.

As enterprises expand globally, they along with their outsourcing partners, vendors and end-users together responsible for  secure access to the widely networked environment and critical data.  Enterprises thus need to ensure that administrators  with privileged identity  with adequate controls to manage and maintain various applications, systems and network devices across the organization. As  Privileged Identity Management (PIM) provides administrators with high levels of authorization to access and control over corporate IT systems, information assets and applications. Inadequate control over privileged user accounts will be a  risk both from security and compliance perspective.

Among all the possible threat vectors acting on an organization, an insider threat is the most potent of all. The term “Privileged Identities” that refers to accounts with special permissions within the enterprise systems can be categorized as:

• Generic or Shared Administrative Accounts.
• Privileged Personal Accounts – used by business users and IT personnel.
• Application Accounts

Earlier managing access to the critical business data and networked environment was through distribution of passwords to these environments or managing host access, however, with today's threat scenario, calls for effective data protection solutions. The identity access management technology thus needs to accommodate for the special needs of privileged accounts, including their provisioning and life cycle management, authentication, authorization, password management and monitoring.

The leading service providers have worked out advanced privileged identity management solutions to address the needs of diverse industry sectors. The services offered include

• Planning Services- executive workshop and business requirement analysis,  Strategy and Roadmap, best fit solution identification and Proof of Concepts
• Implementation Services - Shared ID Management, Session Management and Activity Monitoring
• Sustenance Services- PIM Health Check, Post Implementation Support and enhancement

A modular privileged identity management approach provides enterprises with effective solutions to address the business requirements.


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