PAM for endpoints.

PAM—or privileged access management, if you have the time—allows you to stay on top of roles and accounts with far-reaching rights in your organisation. Certain employees such as admin users have an obvious need to access sensitive or confidential assets to do their job. This is typically achieved via dedicated accounts that come with extensive permissions attached. It’s just that, if such a privileged account is compromised, your network becomes a glass house for anyone who’d like to take a peek. And when they do, all you can do is scramble to contain the damage.

Privileged accounts, which may also include accounts for super users or emergency purposes, are a very popular target for attackers, because they can unlock a lot of virtual doors with not a lot of work to steal the keys. PAM adds a critical management layer to these accounts, enables you to assign granular permissions all the way down to the user level, and offers a bunch of monitoring features to detect, identify and evaluate suspicious activity early on.

Incidentally, machines and systems, too, may have privileged access to an organisation’s resources, e.g. to run automated processes or to interact with other applications. An effective security strategy must therefore consider every last privileged account, no matter who or what is using it.

A PAM for every need.

PAM is being used in diverse parts of an organisation building on different architectures. It’s not a single application, but an umbrella term for a concept that can materialise in all sorts of shapes and sizes. The four most common are:

• PAM for in-house administration
• PAM for secure remote access
• PAM for SaaS scenarios with a host of standard processes and routines
• PAM for endpoints

Tip: Manufacturers have designed completely different products and business models around the various use cases for PAM. This has an impact on the way customers fuse PAM into their day-to-day operations, and also on the financial side of licensing. It is thus essential to first evaluate which particular manifestation of PAM is best suited to tackle your individual challenges.

Benefits of PAM for endpoints.

So you may be wondering what real-life benefits a PAM-for-endpoint solution can bring to your organisation. There are a couple:

• No barriers for productivity
• A load off your IT staff
• Extra protection against ransomware.
• Simplified audits and proofs of compliance
• Nothing falls through the cracks
• Easy implementation of zero-trust concepts

Why you should really look into PAM for endpoints.

PAM for endpoints is not something to take lightly. Of course, many organisations have long since implemented a variety of security solutions to manage permissions, but privileged access is a very critical thing to consider in order to keep your network protected. Turnpikes and a bunch of extra padlocks will do little to help, and ultimately just hit your productivity and irritate your employees, suppliers and partners.

If you really want to prime your IT for the future, there simply is no way around PAM for endpoints. Compared to the reality in the vast majority of organisations today, it provides a much better defence against attacks without negative implications for day-to-day operations. A number of ways to simplify the management and documentation of privileged accounts comes part and parcel of the concept. Everything says it’s a smart investment—provided you are well prepared and know how to avoid its pitfalls.

Bechtle – The right partner for PAM for endpoints.

BeyondTrust or Delinea? CyberArk or Wallix? The sea of PAM for endpoint providers is vast and wide. And if that weren’t enough, the leading manufacturers each have a range of different products and solutions tailored to different needs and use cases. So how do you know which one is right for you? We can help you figure it out. Our partnerships with all major providers mean we know the ins and outs, but we don’t play favourites. This means we can offer truly independent advise to companies of virtually any size, and support them every step of the way from assessing needs and expectations and creating tailored solution designs all the way to implementing their individual PAM-for-endpoint solution.