The growing importance of PAM in today’s IT environments

Organizations rely on privileged accounts more than ever to manage their IT environments. When left unchecked, those accounts pose serious security risks. That’s why companies need to consider Privileged Access Management (PAM): a solution to manage, control, and secure all privileged access. But what exactly is PAM? Why is it so important? And how can you start implementing it in your organization?

What is Privileged Access Management?

Privileged Access Management (PAM) is a solution to control who can access the most sensitive parts of your IT systems, and to ensure that access happens securely and responsibly. You can think of PAM as a digital key cabinet: it stores, monitors, and controls who can use which master keys, when, and for how long.

In most organizations, system administrators, IT support staff, and service accounts have the keys to your vital IT infrastructure. These keys allow them to use critical resources that unprivileged users don’t have access to. Therefore, these privileged accounts must be managed with care because they are a prime target for attackers.

While Identity and Access Management (IAM) handles identifying and authorizing all users across the entire organization, PAM focuses specifically on securing and managing privileged users. Hence, PAM is a subset of IAM, meant to handle high-risk, high-impact access.

Why is PAM important in modern IT environments?

Modern organizations face growing challenges: cyber-attacks are becoming more targeted, the current IT landscape is increasingly complex, and regulations like NIS2 and ISO 27001 demand strict access control.

Privileged accounts are a common target for cyber attackers because once a threat actor has login credentials with permissions tied to the account, they have unfettered and unnoticed access into the system. So, it is not surprising that, according to Forrester Research, 80% of all IT security breaches involve privileged credentials. Other industry reports confirm similar numbers, emphasizing the risk of not managing privileged accounts.

Imagine an attacker gaining access to an admin account. They could disable security controls, steal sensitive data, or disrupt your operations by shutting down critical services. PAM helps prevent this with measures like granting admin rights only for a limited time, rotating credentials frequently, and logging and monitoring every session with privileged access.

Besides this, implementing PAM offers several other practical advantages:

• It improves IT security

PAM enforces the principle of least privilege that states users and processes should only have the minimum necessary access rights to perform their tasks. All privileged actions are also recorded, thereby creating an audit log to make it easier to detect suspicious behaviour.

• It simplifies management

Say goodbye to forgotten admin accounts or weak passwords: control over privileged accounts is centralized across all systems, platforms, and environments is guaranteed.

• It is easier to scale

Whether you’re working in the cloud, on-premises, or with a hybrid environment, PAM scales with your IT landscape and ensures consistent access policies for all privileged accounts.

• It has lower incident costs

By preventing misuse of privileged accounts, PAM not only reduces the number of security incidents, it also lowers their impact. This saves time, money, and reputational damage.

• Compliance audits are faster

As PAM automatically logs privileged activities, it’s easy to generate clear audit trails and reports to demonstrate compliance with standards and regulations like NIS2, GDPR, and ISO 27001.

So, how do you get started with a PAM solution?

Privileged Access Management may seem complex, but with a structured approach, you can implement it step by step. Here’s how:

1. Gain insight into your current privileged access

Start by identifying all human and non-human accounts with elevated rights. This includes system administrators, service accounts, and remote access tools. But also look out for hardcoded credentials in scripts or applications. Many organizations are surprised by how many such accounts exist. Because you can’t protect what you don’t know, this inventory is the foundation for the next steps.

2. Define your goals and assess your risks

Clarify what you want to achieve with PAM. Are you looking to reduce your attack surface, meet audit requirements, or gain better visibility into privileged actions? You should also assess the key risks in your environment, such as users with more privileges than they need, contractors accessing sensitive data, and orphaned or shared admin accounts. What would be the impact of misuse in these situations? Prioritizing use cases will help guide your implementation roadmap and prevent scope creep.

3. Establish a clear access policy

Define who needs access to what, under which conditions, and for what purpose. Define roles, permissions, approval flows, session monitoring, and fallback procedures for emergency access. Effective PAM requires a well-defined and documented access policy.

4. Select the right PAM solution

Select a PAM solution that fits your IT environment, security and compliance needs, and future growth plans. For example, One Identity PAM offers flexible deployment models (on-premises, cloud, and hybrid), as well as automated reports, privileged password vaults, and real-time threat analytics.

5. Implement with expert guidance

PAM touches many critical systems and workflows in your organization, so the implementation should be carefully planned. To ensure a smooth rollout and integration into your existing IT and security architecture and avoid common pitfalls, make sure to involve an experienced partner. Kappa Data helps organizations design, implement, and optimize PAM solutions. Creating added value is in our DNA.

Ready to take control of privileged access? Book a free demo or consultation today and discover how PAM can help reduce your IT security risks and simplify privileged access in your organization.