Why is Privileged Access Management (PAM) Important?

Credentials are the keys to any virtual kingdom. In the average enterprise environment, there are hundreds to thousands of credentials in use. Individual users can manage their own passwords, with the help of policies to ensure secure practices, but the service accounts and secret keys must be managed by administrators. Attackers routinely parlay access to these virtual skeleton keys into widespread access. 

This is a problem at scale, where the administrative team can be overwhelmed with tracking which credentials are being used on which systems and when they were last changed. In contrast to user accounts, application accounts may not be required to use complex passwords. When these factors are taken individually, or even compounded, it means your keys to the kingdom are vulnerable to misuse. 

A Privileged Access Management (“PAM”) system is a force multiplier for allowing administrators to properly manage credentials by applying automation or policies. Features may differ but most enterprise grade PAM solutions contain reporting and alerting mechanisms that allow better insight for security teams to review how credentials and policies are being utilized. One of the largest pitfalls of IT administration is oversight, implementing a PAM system, along with clearly defined identity and access management policies, removes the manual effort that causes credentials to be forgotten. 

What to Expect

• Single point of interaction for licensing, setup, and configuration of PAM technology. 
• Licensing bundled with MOXFIVE implementation services. 
• Full installation and configuration of PAM application including connections with Active Directory and other authentication technologies. 
• Documentation of policies configured. 
• Regular status updates.

What Tactical Steps Should We Expect for PAM Implementation? 

The below activities are a high-level roadmap of how a standard MOXFIVE PAM deployment is implemented.

Benefits of Working with MOXFIVE

IT & Security Expertise
On-Demand
With a deep understanding of both IT operations and security, MOXFIVE Technical Advisors can provide the expertise you need and help determine the most efficient and cost-effective solution.
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Access to Experts at Scale
MOXFIVE maintains an ecosystem of the industry's best technology experts and service providers so we can quickly assemble the right team with the skills you need.

Streamlined Process
MOXFIVE manages the selection, implementation and procurement processes to keep projects on schedule and minimize disruption. 

Resilient Outcomes
MOXFIVE identifies gaps between business, IT and security objectives to build a more resilient environment.

Introduce us to key stakeholders

• Engagement owner. 
• Technical POC who can speak to existing authentication technologies (typically Active Directory and/ or cloud Identity Access Management services). 
• POC(s) for applications that utilize service accounts or secret keys to be managed by PAM. 

Provide MOXFIVE details about your PAM requirements to provide the right scope of licenses and support.

• Details required will be number of PAM users, from administrators to help desk personnel.
• License type, generally standard vs. premium/platinum, for each feature set as applicable. 
• A high-level view of Active Directory, the number of users and policies to be managed, the number of non-AD credentials and any network changes that will need to be implemented. 

The MOXFIVE team will acquire the licenses and set up the customer administrator portal for the specified PAM product.

• Note that payment for the product licenses will be required at time of purchase. 

Provide MOXFIVE access to your environment to facilitate hands-on-keyboard support. 

• MOXFIVE recommends the use of a remote management tool so that we can access the network in an isolated manner, and will need an administrator account to PAM and other authentication systems. 

Establish a regular meeting cadence with MOXFIVE and agree on status update timing. Once engaged, MOXFIVE engineers will deliver the following: 

• A fully-engineered solution to integrate PAM to all applicable authentication systems (e.g. Active Directory). 
• Creation and implementation of policies to be applied to credential groups. 
• Administrator documentation around integration and policies created and configured. 
• Support for troubleshooting and administrator walkthroughs to provide a seamless handoff to your internal IT team.