Supporting business security during the transition to the cloud can lead to disruptions that can disrupt plans and destroy customers.
This is no joke – I know a CFO who shared the same fate. He joined the company in the cloud transformation project and purchased the new Access Management (PAM) solution as part of the restructuring of the cybersecurity industry. The following year, it struggled to implement even the simplest PAM network security use cases. As the migration progressed, the PAM solution failed. The solution is not adaptable to new hybrid IT requirements and use cases.
As you can imagine, he has to finish the initiative. Cutting the umbilical cord is painful for him. Understanding the evolution of business processes is crucial. You should ask these important questions:
- How do employees and vendors access systems and applications?
- Where will these resources be stored? What’s up against the on offer?
- How did the cyber attack develop?
You also need to understand that the move to the cloud is driving changes in the cybersecurity industry, such as how to conserve resources, reduce risk, and increase productivity.
Read on to learn more about these challenges and discover ten additional PAM features needed to support enterprise security during cloud migration
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What is enterprise network security?
Enterprise Cybersecurity is the technology, processes and policies required to protect your business assets from abuse and misuse by cyber attackers. This includes physical and logical security (software).
Cybersecurity for businesses is an essential part of doing business in our online connected world. The cybersecurity industry is a huge field (below). We have all invested in these areas and we are still in a broken state. So where should we focus for the limited budget? What is the best return on investment in cybersecurity to reduce the risk of cyber attacks?
Cyberscape Image This blog will focus on job security management in the form of Privileged Access Management (PAM).
Imagine a world where all your personal and business information is at the mercy of hackers and clicking on malware bugs can cause irreparable damage. Of course, you don’t have to think about it. This is the reality we live in today.
Processes and data in the field and in the cloud. The explosion of workstations, servers, containers, IoT and mobile devices presents opportunities for hackers to take advantage of. Leveraging the cloud means using a “partnership model” where IT does not have direct control and visibility over the IT team. Technology has reached a point where even the smallest businesses are vulnerable to cyberattacks.
The good news is that as cyber attacks evolve, so do the technologies that protect your business and your customers. Investing in strong business cybersecurity allows your team to focus on your business goals rather than fighting cyberattacks-related fires.
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Invest in the right tools to protect your systems and sensitive data
Cybersecurity can be expensive and time consuming, but let me ask you this: How much do ransomware attacks cost your business? Beyond the ransom, a data breach can result in millions of dollars in business disruption and recovery, reputational damage, and possible fines and lawsuits. Costs could also rise to an average of 24 percent in the next two years, according to a striker IBM’s Cost of Data Breach.
So, invest in the right tools to protect your systems and sensitive data.
“Modern cybersecurity tools for modern, transformative enterprises
Business transformation has made cybersecurity more challenging. Putting your faith—and your budget—in the wrong place can result in substandard protection, increased operational overhead and costs, and compliance gaps. As your business modernizes, transforming to take advantage of cloud services, so must your enterprise cybersecurity posture.
PAM cybersecurity—exceptional value for your limited budget
A reasonable approach is to understand where cyber attackers invest most of their efforts and focus on that as the most significant attack surface. Verizon’s Annual Crime Report is one of many reliable publications that reliably takes the pulse of crime and crime. Verizon regularly reports that 70-80% of data breaches and ransomware attacks worldwide involve credentials.
Spending more on network-centric security is not the solution. It makes a lot of sense and business to invest in personal security to prevent access to accounts, offices and servers.
However, not all PAM network security solutions can meet this challenge. To support your modern enterprise, we need a similarly modern PAM with extended capabilities to address these new use cases.
Extended PAM
As we heard earlier from the finance organization executive, you don’t want to fall foul of a solution that struggles to embrace the hybrid cloud nature of your business. You must be clinical and critical in your evaluation.
Lifting and shifting an enterprise application into the cloud does not guarantee the SaaS and PaaS benefits of performance, scalability, and elasticity necessary for a modern business. This also holds for PAM vendors shoehorning a decade-old PAM product into virtual machines in the cloud.
Checklist: Ten capabilities of extended PAM in cybersecurity
There are several characteristics of an extended PAM solution designed to tackle this and make you more resilient to cyberattacks. Not all are new; several have been in PAM for years. However, a modern PAM redesign is critical to ensure parity.
Comprehensive PASM and PEDM
The two critical components of PAM are secure remote access with credential vaulting and host-enforced privilege elevation. Analysts like Gartner call them Policy and Management Delegation (PASM) and Policy and Delegation Management (PEDM). It’s best to have both, especially when it comes to promoting best practices like zero trust and zero rights. Make sure your suppliers, who dedicate most of their R&D budgets to PASMs, don’t steal PEDMs.
Cloud Native PAM Network Security Platform
We have already mentioned low IT budget and value for money. Get great results with a cloud-native PAM platform. You enjoy key benefits of PAM web security products, including:
- Better Performance
- More Reliability
- Less Implementation Costs
- Shared Services
- Centralized Management
- Faster Innovation
- Cost Reduction
- Option 4 Easier
Easier: Cloud – Local SaaS or Open – Enterprise Vault
Some organizations choose to run Vault on their storage facilities to fully manage their business, performance and scalability. Others prefer a SaaS chassis running on a PAM platform to provide easy access to all users (internal or third-party) and reduce overhead and infrastructure costs.
Cloud services in the environment can use PaaS (Platform as a Service) services such as automatic scaling and geolocation to increase efficiency and increase capacity. Keep in mind that individual users, apps, and services will have different needs and requirements. In a DevOps context, programmatic access to Vault services is more desirable.
Client-Based Password Rotation and Coordination
If you dig into the history of PAM, you’ll find that password rotation is a vault requirement from day one. Today, all vaults do this by requiring a local or administrator account to log in and enable the password on each server. These backdoor attack vectors violate best practices such as zero tolerance and zero trust, making your site vulnerable.
Modern PAM method combined with PASM and PEDM. Vault tells the PEDM client to open it locally. This is more elegant and avoids opening new doors to the opponent. It also provides another benefit; The Vault may require the local PAM client to verify the Vault password before disconnecting or starting a session. If they are out of sync, clients can coordinate to ensure users are not allowed access.
Instant Access Workflows
While eliminating the trust of the suspect and minimum authority principles, we must pave the way for greater trust in administrators when necessary. PAM’s web security solution solves the need for self-service applications for full approval. However, “instant access” should be combined with a temporary “right only”. That is, restricting the right of only those who have to do the work and removing the right to represent them only.
Any vulnerability that meets this requirement will be included in the PAM solution. But today’s PAM can also be applied externally, such as ServiceNow, to integrate PAM functionality into broader IT operations.
Passwordless Authentication
Modern PAM network security solutions must support many existing passwordless methods such as PKI, SSH keys and certificates, and FIDO2 dongles. Authentication services and creating MFA on the PAM platform (see above) enable rapid change and support new models such as Passwords.
Multi-Factor Authentication
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is considered an essential weapon in PAM’s cybersecurity arsenal. It helps to disrupt cybercriminals in two important ways; many are harder to crack and certificates are more difficult to obtain or reproduce. MFA provides additional personal authentication, helps identify friend and foe, and prevents bots and malware from increasing legitimate activity and activity.
The PAM web security product has been supporting MFA for some time, while restricting the use of MFA for vault access. However, many laws, regulations, and industry recommendations mandate or mandate MFA to provide high-risk and secure server data. For example, PCI-DSS, the US Federal Government’s Zero Trust Strategy and GDPR.
Also, if you are not using the MFA for remote access and access rights, you may not be eligible for new cyber risk insurance or policy renewals.
Find MFA as a PAM platform service available in all major sessions:
PASM:
- Chassis Sessions
- Private Access
- Remote Session Initiation
PEDM:
- Server Sessions4 444 . Access to remote operators and third-party service providers
Using VPN accounts to interfere with networks has been popular for decades. One of the most famous cases was the 2013 Target data breach. And what could be better than interrupting a more reactive partner? During the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations need to react quickly as offices close; purchasing multiple VPN licenses is a rash reaction. As VPN access multiplies, attackers gain a wider attack surface and lower security barriers.
A modern PAM solution should support access to secure areas without VPN or SSH and RDP clients and servers – just a browser, no client device. This improves security (provided by MFA) and reduces friction between remote operators and suppliers.
Dominion – Identity Consolidation
Administrators rarely have a single account. Especially in Linux environment, they create many native privileges to facilitate this. Each has the ability to attack the vector, increasing your stopping distance. By allowing administrators to log into a system (Windows, Linux or UNIX) with the same account, we can remove them and maintain minimum privileges.
Extended PAM with multiple domain names supports accounts from multiple identity providers. You can use traditional domains like Active Directory, OpenLDAP or cloud domains like Azure AD, Ping Identity or Okta. Separate 3rd party identities from employee accounts and integrate more easily with new information providers, mergers or acquisitions, or migrations to the cloud.
Damage Recovery
If you lose access to confidential and confidential information, systems and applications may be unavailable and business interrupted. In the event of an unexpected system failure, automatic replication to another on-premises or cloud-hosted vault instance ensures continuity. Seamless failover and rapid disaster recovery ensure unbreakable access at all times. This should be done in the PAM solution.