Tag: Privileged account management

Why is it difficult to control the activity of privileged users? In a recent survey, 34% of respondents admitted to sharing passwords or accounts with their coworkers. Sharing credentials is a potentially risky activity, which may result in data breaches and system downtime. These risks are...

Tighter data protection regulations have forced businesses to put data security at the top of their priority list. However most companies still lack a strong cybersecurity culture among their employees. In fact, a recent paper by Osterman Research reports that less than half (42%) of organizations...

Many organizations struggle to secure their systems because their Active Directory is already compromised. AD is usually compromised by insiders or successful attacks on them. So how to keep environment protected even when a privileged your account got hacked? Microsoft Windows Server 2016 has...

Ensuring that systems are patched and that defense-in-depth security protections are working effectively, top the list of concerns for IT departments. But despite these efforts, security breaches are still on the rise because operational issues are commonly ignored. Best practice dictates that...

This post continues the series in which we discuss the threat of privilege abuse. Previously, we talked about what you should know about the threat of privileged users and three key things you can do now to start to gain the control you need over privileged users. In this post, we are going to talk...

Privileged Access Management (PAM) is a new feature in Windows Server 2016 that can secure environments even in cases where AD is already compromised. In this blog, I’ll describe the architecture requirements for setting up PAM solutions. Many organizations struggle to secure their systems...

Privileged accounts are user accounts with extended permissions to access systems and data, such as the root account in Unix and Administrator accounts in Windows. Sometimes they are called “the keys to the kingdom” because a privileged account enables you do things ordinary users can’t, such...

In a previous blog post, “Privilege Abuse: Threat Alert,” we provided an overview of what privilege abuse is and why this threat is so serious. In today’s post, we will look at the problem from a different angle. We’ll examine four notorious data breaches caused by privileged account abuse...

Talking with IT pros, I hear a lot about security issues, and one story is extremely common. The details vary, but at the core is the same threat: privilege account abuse or misuse. In this post, I’ll explain what privilege abuse is, the benefits real companies are realizing by keeping an eye on...

While malware attacks — especially ransomware — seem to make the headlines nearly every day, another serious threat goes largely ignored: privileged user accounts. These powerful accounts can be misused by their owners or taken over and used by attackers, most often to steal the...