Many legacy Privileged Access Management (PAM) solutions are still very manual regarding what they do and how they manage user access and permissions. They are geared toward the human administrator or designed for the data center, making them inadequate for complex and dynamic cloud-hosted infrastructures. Such traditional solutions cannot support large-scale cloud transformation initiatives requiring a modern PAM approach with automated and context-aware access controls.
As we shift to the cloud, and to counter the relentless identity-based attacks, our approach to PAM needs to be redefined to protect access to the cloud and workloads within the cloud. A “lift and shift” of 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 comes with 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 PAM solution that’s automated and purpose-built for the cloud to help you streamline access management and boost operational efficiencies.
1. Modern PAM solution is built for the cloud
A modern PAM solution can reduce the complexities and risks through cloud-native security controls. As your infrastructure evolves and grows, you might have new projects in the private cloud, or virtual private clouds, each with their own workloads in the same cloud provider, or your workloads in different cloud platforms or complexities introduced due to a merger or acquisition. You can quickly bring them into your PAM ecosystem with centralized policy management and strict access and privilege controls with a cloud-ready platform.
2. A seamless experience for all users
One of the biggest reasons PAM projects fail or stall is the inconvenient user experience. Improving user experience for all users is essential for a secure digital business. With quick deployment and regular and automatic updates, the modern SaaS-delivered PAM solution provides a holistic identity security platform across all applications and systems accessible from anywhere. With modern PAM solution built for the cloud, customers can avoid a complicated and protracted IT project to deploy PAM software and the ongoing cost of maintenance and operation.
3. Enhanced operational efficiency
A seamless experience will result in operational efficiencies. Still, it is essential to know that managing privileges in the cloud is highly challenging because the scale is so large. Defining access policies, managing access lifecycle and auditing all privileged access becomes even more complicated in a multi-cloud environment. Complexities introduce security gaps, and that's precisely what threat actors are looking for.
With a modern PAM solution, you can centralize access control policy administration and provide users with a single UI to access all managed resources. Empower your security and IT teams to quickly access a range of accounts and manage privilege access, optimize day-to-day operations or during time-critical instances such as active cyber-attacks.
4. Higher identity assurance at all touchpoints
To sufficiently verify who (or what) a requester is, it is critical to implement MFA everywhere for more robust identity assurance. Legacy approaches to MFA that rely exclusively on static rules that require manual care and feeding don't cover all the bases. A static approach forces everyone to follow similar rules under 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 carefully examine a privileged user's behavior and identify "anomalous" or "non-normal" (and therefore risky) activities. An adaptive authentication method is device, location and user behavior aware. It adapts to the risk level, unlike standard, one-size-fits-all authentication elevation.
5. For security and compliance in the cloud
Security and compliance concepts apply equally to human and machine identities in the cloud and on-premise. 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 making privileged access the core of your cybersecurity strategy, not only you can provide the right users just-in-time and just enough access to critical data, servers and applications but also benefit from end-to-end monitoring and reporting to identify abuse of privilege required for compliance and cyber-insurance requirements.
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