Implementation Essentials

To get started with deploying PAM in your organization, you would need to consider a few essential practices:

1.Discuss business and security requirements

Carry out discussions with executives and the security team. For an effective rollout, consult all relevant stakeholders to gather expectations. This may include executive decision makers (C-Suite), infra operations team, IT teams, security experts, and end users. Meeting these expectations contributes to a successful PAM implementation.

Discussions with the end user can be of importance as it will help successfully drive adoption of the solution across the organization.

2. Define objectives of the PAM program

Once expectations are gathered from crucial members, you need to define the goals you wish to achieve with the PAM solution. This can be derived based on the security framework your organization has in place now, compliance requirements, newly emerging threats, and more.

Objectives could be something like:

• Satisfying regulations such as NIST, Essential Eight, etc.
• Strengthening overall security posture to secure cyber insurance
• Improve operational efficiency by streamlining privileged access
• Bolster internal controls and prevent identity thefts, malware propagation, and insider exploitation
• Enforcing the Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP) for Users
• Data Protection to comply with GDPR or other requirements

3. List out the success criteria

Have a list of success criteria, aligning them with the overall goals of the PAM project. This helps determine the success rate of your PAM project.

4. Strategize the PAM design and infrastructure

Before diving directly into deployment, it is important to have an implementation strategy in place. This acts as a guideline for the various aspects of implementation – timeline, resources, deliverables, etc.