The Powers of Integrated Identity Governance and Privileged Access Security

Organizations have long known the value of comprehensive identity governance and privileged access management. Strong identity governance and privileged access security solutions are foundational elements to any modern cybersecurity strategy.  Unfortunately, all too often these solutions are deployed as two separate systems.  A siloed approach to managing who has access to what does more than leave dangerous security gaps and blind spots; it can result in no centralized visibility on users, loss of productivity, and require more IT resources – now and moving forward.

Privileged access is unique in that it offers a gateway to an organization’s high-value digital assets; privileged accounts really do represent the “keys to your IT kingdom.” It’s not surprising based on this that Forrester estimates that 80% of security breaches involve privileged credentials.*  As such, cyber attackers covet privileged credentials and will go to great lengths to obtain them – including social engineering beyond your perimeter.  Nearly all serious security breaches involve compromised privileged accounts.

All too often, however, privileged access security is implemented as independent from an identity governance solution.  This approach is often referred to as the “swivel chair” model.  The lack of integration requires IT to toggle between two separate systems when managing non-privileged and privileged accounts. (Assuming they are even operated by one group or one team.) This siloed approach introduces risks and inefficiencies.

When privileged access security is independent of identity governance, comprehensively managing privileged access suffers from the following challenges:

• The number of orphaned, backdoor or service privileged accounts rises in your environment, and typically they are “hidden” from normal management or audit;
• Over time privileged entitlement creeps into non-administrative accounts. Individuals’ access rights tend to grow beyond what they need to do their current jobs;
• Privileged access is mistakenly granted to people who do not need or should not have it, e.g., it is difficult to implement consistent, policy-driven access rights.

As organizations adopt cloud first, IoT and mobile strategies, the potential attack surfaces increase, with new pathways for attackers to exploit identities and access. As a result, organizations need to be even more “identity aware” and prioritize privilege access security and management. Securing today’s enterprise requires extending their identity governance solution’s visibility and control to include privileged users, applications and access entitlements, whether residing within on-premise, hybrid or cloud-based systems.

The Benefits of Identity Governance and Privileged Access Security Converged

By integrating the CyberArk Privileged Access Security Solution with SailPoint IdentityIQ, organizations can centrally manage and control access for all identities, privileged and non-privileged accounts alike. Integrating these two solutions closes many of the gaps in a siloed approach, and offers additional organizational benefits:

• Gaining a centralized, policy-driven approach to identity and access governance across all users and environments;
• Increasing user productivity with more automated privileged access provisioning synchronized to lifecycle events, reducing wait times and error-prone fulfillment;
• Mitigating entitlement creep and orphaned privileged accounts via regular and timely de-provisioning;
• Synchronizing and enforcing access controls based on unified security policies for all users (privileged and non-privileged) and applications. This helps to reduce errors and ensure all identities have the right permissions;
• Fully managing privileged users and application entitlement lifecycles. Effectively creating, reviewing and approving privileged user access permissions based upon group affiliations, roles and other commonalities. All privileged access requests can be verified using a single, automated approval workflow, further reducing IT overhead;
• Consolidating certifications for privileged and non-privileged accounts, certifying users have the right access to the right safes and enable CyberArk Administrators to certify safe access

The CyberArk Privileged Access Security solution integrated with SailPoint’s IdentityIQ allows organizations in today’s accelerated business environment to extend and maximize the security and productivity benefits from identity governance to include privileged access. By not having to swivel back and forth from one solution to the other, businesses can gain better and comprehensive visibility into all accounts and govern them from a centralized location. One team can establish consistent governance controls across all identities, grant access more rapidly to protect productivity, with reduced operational time and cost.

Now especially is the time for organizations to minimize the security gaps and blind spots that come from managing these otherwise siloed accounts. Bring the full power of identity management to reduce security risks, enforce compliance and boost organizational efficiency by extending identity governance to encompass privileged access security management.

To learn more about the integrated SailPoint – CyberArk solution, you can download the following solution brief – Secure Your Enterprise with the Powers of Identity and Privilege.  Also be sure to check out this integration demonstration.

*The Forrester Wave™: Privileged Identity Management, Q3 2016