Reduce IT Admin Risks and Costs with Privileged Access Management (PAM) I changed risk and spend to spend and risk. “spend with Privileged Access Management” could be misleading. Control the access of your most critical users without breaking your budget.I’m a security/operations manager and I’m dealing with the following problems: Internal – There are no change management practices for when people leave the organization or change roles. A breach occurred due to mismanagement of privileged accounts. System or machine-to-machine account passwords are rarely changed. External – Must meet regulatory compliance requirements.Need to be better prepared to protect admin accounts as they are a target in today’s threat landscape, putting my job at risk. Users, especially admin users because of their heightened levels of access, are an organization’s weakest link. Simply implementing technology is not enough. Organizations need a formal PAM solution and process.The time for ad hoc anything is over. Formal processes and solutions need to be in place. Not doing anything can be low cost, but you’re masking a great complication that is high risk. Protect your adminsYour internal employees have always been a vulnerability against your organization’s overall security, but your privileged accounts are even more of a target because of their heightened level of access to sensitive data.Protect your systemsPAM is an investment. Excuses, such as it seems like too much work and a waste of money to put in place, tend to outweigh the many benefits of having that technology.Protect the castleUnderstand how PAM can save your organization money by streamlining authentication and reducing the amount of help desk tickets related to password reset. Get the support of admins by letting them know it will make their lives easier through automated process, and let stakeholders know that the PAM means more user security Are your admin accounts really that protected? Absolutely not. You need to be doing more.Verizon’s 2013 Data Breach Investigation Report – 76% network intrusions exploited weak or stolen credentials. 47% of respondents in Ponemon’s May 2014 study believe that malicious insider attacks are the result of attackers using privileged users’ information.In a 2013 study conducted by CyberSheath on APT privileged account exploitation, each interviewee confirmed that privileged accounts being taken advantage of were a primary factor in 100% of advanced attacks.49% of respondents (out of 693) do not have policies to assign privileged access (Ponemon – Privileged User Abuse & The Insider Threat)PAM means fewer wasted fundsA large bank with 12,000 employees and around 800 computing servers achieved an ROI of about 25% by implementing a PAM solution. The total cost savings was $69,564.78: Security incident reduction ($62,009.22)Help desk ticket reduction ($7,555.56)The investment on PAM was $55,750.00: Technology ($31,600.00)Maintenance ($24,150.00).Understand the purpose and value of the PAM blueprint.Understand the business requirements for PAM.Analyze which solution is best to carry forward after conducting a current and future state evaluation.Manage stakeholder expectations and inform admins how PAM will affect them. Use RFP and vendor demo script templates to ensure you get the best solution for your requirements.Understand and execute project steps to successfully implement PAM.

http://www.infotech.com/research/ss/reduce-it-admin-risks-costs-with-privileged-access-management-pam