How would an audit describe your privileged access posture?

In recent years ‘Privileged Access’, and how it is managed, has become a favoured hunting ground for auditors. With this in mind, how would an audit describe your privileged access posture?

Does your organisation have a definition of what is meant by the term ‘privileged access’? Would you know where all your privileged accounts are? Would your organisation be able to satisfactorily provide the answers to all of their questions? Even if the answer is ‘yes’, how much effort is expended in being able to provide the evidence for those answers?

Privileged accounts provide administrative access to an organisation’s most critical assets and resources and, as with anything, the first step to controlling them is identifying them – but this is no simple task.

When you hear Privileged Access Management (PAM) it’s easy to consider just your just your financially critical systems, but in reality Privileged Accounts are spread far and wide throughout your organisation – business applications, ERP, databases, on-premise applications, cloud environments, endpoints (Laptops, Desktops, Servers), BYOD, DevOps, the list goes on.

But this first step doesn’t have to be so arduous. Tools like CyberArk’s Discover & Audit (or DNA) can help you to discover these privileged accounts before your auditors do.

DNA scans your organisation’s IT systems for vulnerable privileged credentials like passwords, SSH keys, embedded credentials and even those hard-coded, clear text credentials that are the life-blood of, sometimes critical, business applications. The scan also maps out and helps visualise, the systems they could gain access to, highlighting exactly how an attacker could capitalise if these vulnerable credentials were compromised.

Turnkey’s team of PAM consultants can guide you through the discovery process and help you make sense of the comprehensive results a DNA scan provides. Together, we can enable you to understand your current Privileged Access position, plan your next steps to mitigating your risks & tackle your vulnerabilities, and help put a business case together for a comprehensive reform of the way you manage your privileged access, keeping you one step ahead of the auditors!