Many legacy Privileged Access Management (PAM) solutions are still very manual in what they do and how they manage user access and permissions. They are intended for the human administrator or designed for the data center, which makes them unsuitable for complex and dynamic infrastructures hosted in the cloud. These traditional solutions can’t support large-scale cloud transformation initiatives that require a modern PAM approach with automated, contextual access controls.
As we move to the cloud and to counter relentless identity-based attacks, our approach to PAM must be redefined to protect cloud access and cloud workloads. A “lift and shift” from a legacy PAM product to the cloud is not a secure or scalable option. You need a cloud-ready PAM solution to secure your organization and stop identity-related attacks, the leading cause of data breaches. A modern cloud-native solution delivers the inherent benefits of cloud applications: unparalleled scalability, high availability, ease of use, and low total cost of ownership.
“You invest in modern infrastructure and application development tools. Shouldn’t you invest in a modern PAM solution designed for the cloud or hybrid environment to protect it?
Let’s dive into these five benefits of a modern, automated, cloud-native PAM solution to help you streamline access management and improve operational efficiency.
1. Modern PAM is built for the cloud
A modern PAM solution can reduce complexities and risks with cloud-native security controls. As your infrastructure evolves and grows, you may have new private cloud projects or virtual private clouds, each with their own workloads in the same cloud provider, or your workloads on different cloud platforms or the complexities introduced due to a merger or acquisition. You can quickly integrate them into your PAM ecosystem with centralized policy management and strict access and privilege controls with a cloud-ready platform.
2. Smooth experience for all users
Inconvenient user experience is one of the main reasons why PAM projects fail or crash. Improving the user experience for all users is essential for a secure digital business. With rapid deployment and regular, automatic updates, the modern SaaS-delivered PAM solution provides a holistic identity security platform for all applications and systems accessible from anywhere. With a modern PAM solution built for the cloud, customers can avoid a complicated and protracted IT project to deploy PAM software and ongoing maintenance and operational costs.
3. Improved operational efficiency
A seamless experience will result in operational efficiencies. Yet, it is essential to know that privilege management in the cloud is very difficult because the scale is so large. Defining access policies, managing the access lifecycle, and auditing all privileged access becomes even more complicated in a multi-cloud environment. Complexities introduce security vulnerabilities, and that is precisely what threat actors are looking for.
With a modern PAM solution, you can centralize the administration of access control policies and provide users with a single user interface to access all managed resources. Empower your security and IT teams to quickly access a range of accounts and manage privileged access, optimizing day-to-day operations or during critical instances such as active cyberattacks.
4. Better Identity Assurance Across All Touchpoints
To sufficiently verify who (or what) an applicant is, it is essential to implement MFA everywhere for more robust identity assurance. AMF legacy approaches that rely exclusively on static rules requiring manual care and feeding don’t cover all the bases. A static approach forces everyone to follow similar rules in all circumstances and fails to measure risk accurately. A modern cloud-ready PAM solution supports risk-based MFA using modern machine learning algorithms and behavioral analytics to closely examine a privileged user’s behavior and identify “abnormal” activity. or “not normal” (and therefore risky). An adaptive authentication method considers device, location, and user behavior. It adapts to the level of risk, unlike standard and single sign-on elevation.
5. For cloud security and compliance
The concepts of security and compliance apply equally to human and machine identities in the cloud and on premises. Never assume that the cloud provider’s default security controls can completely protect your data in the cloud and meet specific compliance and regulatory requirements. By placing privileged access at the heart of your cybersecurity strategy, you can not only provide the right users just in time and just enough access to critical data, servers and applications, but also benefit from monitoring and reporting of end-to-end to identify abuse of privilege required for compliance and cyber assurance requirements.
Delinea believes that every user should be treated as a privileged user and wants seamless and secure access, even as administrators want privileged access controls without undue complexity. Delinea’s solutions enable seamless security for the modern hybrid enterprise with PAM solutions that define access boundaries. Learn more.
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