Endpoints with local administrator access continue to remain high on the radar of hackers. This is not without a reason. After all, these endpoints give them easy access to infiltrate further into your network by tapping into the power of local admin privileges. However, abruptly removing the local admin privileges can disrupt business activities of the user. Therefore the solution lies in meeting the user’s access demands without compromising IT security.
Least privilege principle relies on granting the users with only the required privileges to complete their business; however , today's typical business environment is filled with numerous local admin accounts. Most of these accounts are never always used, opening up avenues for cyber attacks.
Giving a user Local Admin Rights means giving them full control over the local computer. A user with local admin rights can add and remove software,hardware or change computer settings like network configuration, etc. This full fledged access presents a huge risk for cyberattacks. Bad actors use a variety of social engineering techniques to infiltrate endpoints.
Once in, they can unleash the power of the local admin privileges on the endpoints to move laterally across the network to take complete control of your organization network. Hence removing unnecessary local admin privileges from the endpoints are critical to organization’s information security.
Lesser local admin accounts means reduced attack surface for the cybercriminals to exploit, however it must be done without causing disruption to end-user business activities. With Securden Unified PAM, You can remove unnecessary local admin accounts with the help of an Inventory report.
Certain applications need local admin privileges to run. Suddenly removing the local admin rights from the users can disrupt business operations as the users won’t be able to run their business applications they used to run before with their admin privileges. This can cause user frustration.
To overcome this issue, Securden Unified PAM elevates the application privileges so that the standard users without local administrator rights on their endpoints can continue to run the applications they need for their business activities.
In short, Securden’s Unified PAM empowers standard users to run approved applications for their business without having the need for local admin rights.
Securden Unified PAM keeps track of which applications are being run by the users. Based on the trends, It identifies the applications that need to be automatically elevated. You can also exercise application control by classifying trusted applications as White listed and prevent users from running untrusted applications by black listing them.
Securden Unified PAM lets the user run the applications they need for their business by smoothly elevating the applications without having the need for the user to have administrator access. However, at times, the users themselves need to be elevated as admins for a short duration. This is achieved through the Just in time model.
With PAM, You can implement JIT (Just in time) access to grant time-limited, fully controlled, and comprehensively audited temporary administrator access to standard users when they need it. The access will be revoked automatically after the approved time interval elapses.
Moreover, the privileged sessions can be fully monitored and recorded. The sessions can be terminated any time over any suspicious activity by the user. All the activities are recorded in audit logs helping you to meet audit and regulatory compliance.