Key to green door

Businesses creating security nightmare by failing to secure privileged accounts

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(Image: Stockfresh)

26 July 2016

Most companies fail to secure the “keys to the kingdom,” according to a new benchmark survey.

Last week, privileged account management (PAM) specialist Thycotic and research firm Cybersecurity Ventures released their 2016 State of Privileged Account Management security report, based on the responses of more than 500 IT security professionals who have participated in the Privileged Password Vulnerability Benchmark survey to date.
High priority, low compliance

While 80% of respondents indicated PAM security is a high priority for their organisations, and 60% said PAM security is required to demonstrate compliance with government regulations, 52% of participants received a failing grade on enforcement of proper privileged credential controls.

A big part of the problem, said Joseph Carson, a certified information systems security professional (CISSP) responsible for EMEA product marketing and global strategic alliances for Thycotic, is that the number of devices and systems with privileged credentials within the enterprise is expanding at a rapid rate. But 66% of organisations still rely on manual methods, like Excel spreadsheets, to manage privileged accounts.

“The large amount of devices that we’re getting is so quickly accelerating that organisations are struggling to do the simple fundamentals,” he says. “Every piece of networking equipment, switches, Internet of Things devices – and organisations are doing things manually. If they’re not managing it, they’re leaving it as the default setting.”
Privileged accounts mean machines, too

Organisations have a tendency to think of privileged accounts in terms of the people who are using them. But privileged accounts are also extended to machines and systems to allow them to interact.

“Sometimes it’s two to five times the number of systems that an organisation has,” Carson says. “If an organisation has 1,000 systems, typically they have 2,000 to 5,000 privileged accounts. Every system that gets deployed comes with a default account.”

They also get connected to service accounts to maintain the systems. Each virtual machine that gets deployed also receives privileges that frequently don’t expire when the machine they’re associated with get spun down. And if the VM is cloned those privileges get cloned along with them. The end result is that organisations typically have many rogue privileged accounts with access to their environment.

The benchmark survey found that 20% of organisations have never changed their default passwords on privileged accounts. Other failures to secure privileged accounts include the following:

  • 30% of organisations still allow accounts and passwords to be shared
  • 40% use the same security for privileged accounts as standard accounts
  • 70% do not require approvals for creating new privileged accounts
  • 50% do not audit privileged account activity

Privileged accounts are a favourite target for attackers because they unlock access to virtually all parts of a given network.

“Weak privileged account management is a rampant epidemic at large enterprises and governments globally,” Steven Morgan, founder and CEO at Cybersecurity Ventures, said in a statement. “Privileged accounts contain the keys to the IT kingdom, and they are a primary target for cybercriminals and hackers-for-hire who are launching increasingly sophisticated cyber-attacks on businesses and costing the world’s economies trillions of dollars in damages. We expect the needle on automated PAM solutions adoption to move fairly quickly into the 50% range over the next two years.”

IDG News Service

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