Someone is selling your admin passwords for pocket change right now. It's happening on the dark web as you read this. Every day, companies get breached because their admin accounts were compromised.
The average company takes nearly a year to even notice they've been hacked. Your competitor might already know your system better than you do.
The privileged access management best practices in this guide are your only defense against becoming tomorrow's headline.
What is Privileged Access Management (PAM)?
PAM strategy is a security framework that controls admin accounts. You know that one person in your office who has access to everything? The guy who can reset everyone's passwords, access the CEO's files, and basically run the entire company from his laptop? That's exactly what hackers want to become.
Privileged Access Management (PAM) puts a smart security system around these super-powered accounts. Instead of letting admin accounts operate without restrictions, it secures them properly and only grants access when absolutely necessary.
- Account Discovery: PAM finds every admin account in your system. Even forgotten ones from departed employees.
- Access Control: It controls who gets access to what and when. Like a digital bouncer for your servers.
- Activity Monitoring: Every click and login gets recorded. Constant surveillance of your privileged users.
Why Privileged Access Management Matters?
Modern privileged access management matters because hackers are getting smarter every day. While you focus on regular employee passwords, cybercriminals go straight for admin accounts. Because they control everything in your company.
Why would a thief pick locks on multiple doors when they can steal the master key? That's exactly what admin accounts are to hackers.
- Financial Impact: Companies spend millions recovering from breaches. Paying lawyers. Losing customers who never come back after their data gets stolen.
- Government Penalties: Regulators hit businesses with massive fines when admin accounts get compromised. Especially banks and hospitals that handle sensitive information.
- Business Reputation: Your customers will lose trust immediately when they hear about data breaches. Winning them back takes years of effort and marketing spend.
9 Best Practices for Privileged Access Management
1. Identify & Classify All Privileged Accounts
Your company has admin accounts hiding everywhere. You probably don't know about half of them. Every software installation creates new privileged accounts. Every system update adds more. Your IT team forgets to track these accounts. These forgotten accounts become easy targets for hackers.
PAM best practices start with finding every single admin account in your environment. This includes obvious ones like your domain administrator. It also includes hidden service accounts that run automatically in the background.
- Account Discovery: Search every server, application, and database for accounts with elevated permissions. Include automated service accounts that applications use to communicate with each other.
- Risk Classification: Group accounts by danger level. Tier 0 accounts control your entire network. Tier 1 accounts only affect specific systems or departments.
- Documentation: Record who owns each account and what it controls. Document why it exists. This helps you make smart security decisions and pass compliance audits.
2. Enforce the Principle of Least Privilege & Zero Trust
The Principle of Least Privilege is a core security concept. It forms the foundation of modern access management. This principle is simple. Give users only the minimum access they need for their work tasks. Follow least privilege correctly. Compromised accounts can't cause widespread damage.
PAM works with Zero Trust IAM principles that require constant checking and proper approval for all access requests.
- Core Security Concept: Establish least privilege as your access management foundation. This approach protects sensitive data and systems. It controls who can access what resources.
- Minimize Access Rights for Users: Reduce user permissions to only essential functions required for their specific job roles. Remove unnecessary privileges that create security vulnerabilities. And compliance risks.
- Grant Minimum Levels of Access Needed: Provide only the exact permissions required for current tasks and projects. Review access regularly. Ensure users maintain appropriate permission levels for their responsibilities.
- Reduce Attack Surface: Limit potential entry points for cybercriminals by restricting user privileges across all systems. This prevents attackers from moving laterally through your network. After initial compromise.
- Fundamental Security Practice: Implement least privilege as standard procedure for all access decisions. Train IT teams and managers properly. They should evaluate access requests based on business necessity. Not convenient.
3. Enable Strong Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
Passwords alone are useless against modern hackers. Even strong passwords get stolen through phishing emails or data breaches. Your admin accounts need extra protection layers. Multi-factor authentication forces attackers to steal multiple things instead of just one password.
Most companies use SMS codes for MFA. This is better than nothing but still weak. Hackers can steal your phone number through SIM swapping. Hardware tokens and biometric scanners provide much stronger security.
- Advanced Authentication Methods: Use hardware tokens, fingerprint scanners, or smart cards instead of SMS codes. These methods are much harder for hackers to steal or fake.
- Smart Risk Assessment: Require stronger authentication when users login from new locations or devices. Let trusted employees use simple verification when accessing from their regular office computers.
- Emergency Access Planning: Create secure backup methods for when MFA devices fail or get lost. Log all emergency access attempts and review them immediately for suspicious activity.
4. Vault & Automate Credential Rotation
Your IT team probably stores admin passwords in Excel files or sticky notes. This is like leaving your house keys under the doormat. Anyone who finds these files instantly gets access to your most sensitive systems. Password vaults encrypt all credentials and track who accessed what and when.
Effective privileged access management best practices include automatic password changes. Set systems to update admin passwords every month or after security incidents. This limits damage if hackers steal old credentials.
- Secure Storage: Store all admin passwords, API keys, and certificates in encrypted vaults instead of spreadsheets or text files. Track every access attempt with detailed logs.
- Automatic Updates: Schedule regular password changes across all systems simultaneously. Update passwords immediately after employees leave or security breaches occur.
- System Integration: Connect vaults directly to applications so systems get new passwords automatically. This eliminates manual password updates that IT teams often forget or delay.
5. Implement Just-in-Time (JIT) Access
Most companies give admin access that lasts forever. Employees get elevated permissions and keep them for months or years. This creates huge security risks. . Just-in-time access gives admin privileges only when needed. Removes them automatically after tasks finish.
JIT works like borrowing a car key. You get it for specific trips. Return it immediately. This prevents hackers from finding permanent admin accounts to steal. It also stops employees from accidentally causing damage. With privileges they forgot they had.
- Time-Limited Access: Grant admin privileges for specific hours or days based on project needs. Remove access automatically when the time expires. Or tasks complete.
- Request Approval Workflow: Require managers to approve high-risk access requests. Allow automatic approval for routine maintenance tasks. Log all requests for security audits.
- Temporary Account Creation: Create brand new admin accounts for special projects. Delete them completely when finished. This ensures no forgotten accounts remain in your systems.
6. Monitor Privileged Sessions & User Behavior
Your admin users could be doing anything right now and you would never know. They might be downloading customer databases. They could be installing malware. Some might be selling company secrets to competitors. Session monitoring records everything admin users do on their computers.
Modern privileged access management best practices include watching admin behavior in real-time. Systems can spot unusual activities like logging in at midnight or accessing files they never touch. When something looks suspicious, you can terminate their session immediately.
- Activity Recording: Capture all keystrokes, screen activity, and file access during admin sessions. Store these recordings securely for security investigations and compliance audits.
- Behavior Analysis: Learn normal patterns for each admin user and alert when they do something unusual. Flag activities like accessing customer data outside work hours or downloading large files.
- Real-Time Alerts: Get instant notifications when admin users perform high-risk actions. Automatically block or terminate sessions that show signs of malicious activity or policy violations.
7. Conduct Regular Access Reviews & Audits
Your company probably has admin accounts for employees who quit two years ago. Former contractors still have system access. People who switched departments kept their old privileges. These forgotten accounts are security disasters waiting to happen.
Access reviews find these problems before hackers do. Check who has admin access every quarter. Remove permissions from people who no longer need them. This simple process prevents most privilege-related security breaches.
- Quarterly Permission Audits: Review all admin accounts every three months. Ensure current employees only have access they need for their jobs. Remove accounts for departed employees immediately.
- Usage Pattern Analysis: Identify admin accounts that never get used. Or only access systems occasionally. Disable unused accounts. Reduce permissions for rarely-used ones.
- Manager Confirmation Process: Require department managers to verify their team members still need current access levels. Document all approvals for compliance audits. And regulatory reviews.
8. Apply Role-Based or Policy-Based Access Controls
Stop giving custom access to every single employee. This creates a management nightmare. Your HR person has different permissions than accounting. Marketing needs different access than engineering. Role-based access control groups employees by job function and gives identical access to people with similar roles.
Attribute-based access control takes this further. It considers location, time, device type, and risk level before granting access. An employee might get full access from the office but limited access from home. Integration with identity and access management platforms ensures consistent policies across all systems.
- Job-Based Permissions: Create standard access packages for each department and role. New employees automatically get appropriate permissions based on their job title and responsibilities.
- Smart Access Rules: Set policies that consider time, location, and device before granting access. Block access attempts from unusual locations or during off-hours without approval.
- Centralized Policy Management: Define access rules once and apply them across all company systems. Update permissions automatically when employees change roles or departments.
9. Educate Users & Enforce PAM Policies
Your employees are your biggest security weakness. They click phishing links, share passwords with coworkers, and leave computers unlocked. Most security breaches happen because employees make simple mistakes that hackers exploit.
Training programs must teach employees about password security and social engineering attacks. When employees understand the risks, they make better security decisions.
- Regular Security Training: Conduct monthly training sessions covering password security, phishing recognition, and proper handling of admin accounts. Use real breach examples. Show actual consequences.
- Clear Policy Documentation: Write simple, easy-to-understand policies. Explain what employees can and cannot do with admin access. Post consequences for policy violations prominently.
- Incident Learning Programs: When security incidents happen, use them as teaching moments for the entire organization. Share what went wrong. Show how to prevent similar problems.
Strengthen PAM with Infisign's Zero Trust
In terms of AI-powered PAM alternatives, Infisign is one of the most flexible solutions available. It includes the Infisign IAM suite for employees. Plus UniFed - a CIAM tool for customers.
The main purpose of a PAM tool is compliance. Making sure sensitive information remains confidential. Organizations need to avoid data breaches. These can cost millions in damages and reputation loss.
Real Business Impact: Companies using Infisign experience 90% faster IT administration. They eliminate manual access management bottlenecks. IT teams report managing user access rights in under a minute. This transforms operational efficiency across the organization.
Infisign comes with automated audit trails and over 6000+ API + SDK connections. This enables passwordless authentication and comprehensive access management through:
- Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC): Infisign delivers highly precise and scalable permission management with ABAC. Make instant, attribute-based access changes by role or department. Apply changes across your entire user base simultaneously. Handle hundreds or thousands of users.
- Universal SSO + Adaptive MFA: Infisign's SSO enhances security without compromising user experience. It combines Single Sign-On with Adaptive MFA. Modern security layers like biometrics and device passkeys ensure access remains highly secure. And extremely fast.
- AI Access Assist: AI Access Assist dramatically accelerates IT administration. Through intelligent chatbots and integrations with Slack or Microsoft Teams. Administrators can securely manage user access rights and approvals within minutes.
- Passwordless Authentication: Infisign operates on a forward-thinking security model. Uses passwordless authentication principles. This Zero Trust and Zero Knowledge Proof framework naturally improves security. It continuously verifies users without exposing actual credential data.
- Automated User Provisioning: The platform streamlines access management through intelligent automated user setup and removal. This eliminates manual provisioning work. It prevents security gaps from "access creep" that plague traditional systems.
- Enterprise-Grade Security That Scales: This comprehensive approach provides complete, advanced security capabilities in one integrated platform. Organizations benefit from predictable performance. Seamless scalability as they grow.
- Multi-Ecosystem Integration: With extensive pre-built connections and unlimited directory syncing support. Infisign enables immediate integration into existing IT infrastructure. This includes legacy platforms that don't support SAML or OAuth. And on-premises applications.
Ready to experience how Infisign transforms your privileged access security? Organizations report measurable improvements in both security posture and operational efficiency. Within the first month of implementation. Schedule your free demo today and experience the difference.
FAQs
What are the three best practices for securing privileged accounts?
- Require multi-factor authentication for every admin login because passwords alone are useless.
- Give employees only the access they absolutely need for their specific jobs.
- Monitor everything admin users do on their computers to catch suspicious activity immediately.
These steps stop most hackers from stealing your most powerful accounts and destroying your business.
What are the three primary pillars of PAM?
The three primary pillars of PAM are simple. Reinforcement of the principle of least privilege. Management of privileged sessions. Incorporation of multi-factor authentication. These foundational elements work together. They secure admin accounts. They control access workflows. They verify user identities across all privileged operations.
What is the best PAM solution?
The best PAM solution varies by company size and needs.
Look for credential vaulting, session monitoring, and automated access controls. Infisign stands out with AI-powered features, zero trust architecture, and no hidden costs. Choose solutions that integrate easily with your current systems while providing comprehensive security coverage.
