A well-defined access control mechanism is quintessential for maintaining security and managing user access permissions. Organizations always strive hard to strike the right chord when it comes to IT security, IT efficiency and IT operational continuity.

Now, streamlining access control mechanisms can be done in two separate ways.

• Role Based Access Control (RBAC)
• Policy Based Access Control (PBAC)

Now the question is which one is better and relevant for your organization? RBAC streamlines access management by allocating users’ rights and privileges according to their assigned roles. PBAC, on the other hand, bases access rights and permissions on policies. The decisions about which users can access which system and when are completely based on these policies.

The formulation of any of these access control policies depends on the organization’s size, IT security practices, deployment of solutions, and policy management. In this blog, we have done a deep-delved analysis of RBAC and PBAC. It explains which access control model is suitable for which organization, how and why.

What is Role Based Access Control (RBAC)?

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) mechanism plays a pivotal role in managing and controlling access to multiple digital resources within an organization. This approach assigns permissions and privileges to individuals or entities based on their roles and responsibilities. According to RBAC,

• Roles are created for various job functions within an organization.
• Permissions to perform specific operations are assigned to these roles.
• Users acquire permissions indirectly through their assigned roles, simplifying common tasks like adding users or changing departments.

The three primary rules that govern RBAC are:

• Role assignment: A user can exercise a permission only if they have been assigned a role.
• Role authorization: A user’s active role must be authorized under any circumstance.
• Permission authorization: A user can exercise permission only if it is authorized for their active role.

Role Based Access Control can be used to facilitate security administration in large organizations with numerous users and permissions. It is different from mandatory access control (MAC) and discretionary access control (DAC) but can enforce these policies without complications.

What is Policy Based Access Control (PBAC)?

Policy-Based Access Control (PBAC) mechanism manages user access to critical systems and data repositories as per organizational policies. In PBAC, the role of the user combines with access policies to determine the privileges they should be granted. Here is how it works:

• Flexibility to be Fine-Grained: PBAC supports contextual controls that allow policies to be set up to allow access to resources from specific locations and times, as well as to assess the linkages that exist between identities and resources. It is simple to create, remove, or modify groups of users, and it only takes a click to remove outdated rights.
• Easy to Create and Test Policies: It is less challenging for the SRM (Security Risk Management) team to create a policy that must be followed by users or group of users irrespective of their roles and strength in respective departments. Not only that, but there is also regular testing of the policies to ensure that new additions or amendments are incorporated successfully.
• PBAC gives Transparency and Visibility: Establishing a robust access management policy begins with visualizing and mapping the relationship between the identities and the resources. Administrators can see who has permission to do what regarding all organizational assets thanks to PBAC. It improves cybersecurity, fills up security loopholes left by RBAC, and provides a proactive approach to complying with Data and Privacy regulations.

Unlike Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), PBAC allows rapid privilege changes based on new regulations or corporate policies without extensive role adjustments throughout the organization. Benefits of PBAC include consistent security policy enforcement, reduced administrative overhead, improved security, and the ability to audit and report user activity for compliance purposes.

Differentiating Analysis

Here is a detailed comparison of the two access control mechanisms/models.

How ARCON Supports RBAC and PBAC

ARCON | Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution provides IT security and risk management team with adequate security capabilities needed to manage, monitor, and control privileged users. The solution provides best-in-class security features that includes fine-grained controls, rule, and role-based access control (RBAC), just-in-time (JIT) privileges, multi-factor authentication (MFA), password vaulting, session monitoring, customized reporting, and many other classic PAM capabilities to address some of the most complex use-case challenges.

ARCON | Endpoint Privilege Management (EPM) ensures rule-based (policy-based) access control mechanism for enterprises seamlessly. Moreover, endpoint privileges are granularly controlled and restricted through time-based, day-based, and duration-based parameters. ARCON | EPM offers File Integrity Monitoring (FIM) feature that helps IT administrators to identify unapproved or unauthorized changes made on files in end-user devices and take necessary actions (rollbacks if needed) while keeping track of file history. This is an advantage of PBAC.

Conclusion

RBAC and PBAC models are common parts of Identity and Access Management (IAM) practices in organizations worldwide. However, which one best fits your IT infrastructure depends on organization to organization. According to business needs, IT security requirements, IT operational efficiency and compliance mandates, SRM leaders opt for the suitable model.

Very often the two IT security practices, Privileged Access Management (PAM) and Identity and Access Management (IAM) are misunderstood or mistaken to be the same. Both these access management security solutions are commonly used in large organizations and SMEs to manage authorization, authentication and seamless monitoring of the users on a large scale. However, if we perform a hair-split analysis, both the solutions serve a slightly different purpose in the enterprise IT environment. 

What is IAM?

Identity and Access Management (IAM) solution manages and controls the general end-users’ run-time access to the IT resources such as applications, network files etc. The purpose of the IAM solution is to enhance the IT operational effectiveness along with governing and managing the life-cycle of a large number of internal and external identities.

What is PAM?

Privileged Access Management (PAM) is a subset of IAM that controls and manages the privileged users’ access to the critical IT resources of an enterprise. It’s a secured method of allowing access to a set of end-users called as privileged users- the super users with elevated privileges or  administrative rights to access highly sensitive and confidential data, network devices among other critical IT assets whether hosted on-premise or on-cloud.

What are the Commonalities between IAM & PAM?

Role-based Access: Both IAM and PAM controls user access based on user roles and revokes the access rights once the task is over. It is not necessary that every user requires access to every application. Hence, role-based access is the first step towards a robust security goal where predefined sets of permissions are set to accomplish specific tasks.

Multi-factor Authentication: It adds an additional layer of security that is beyond just an access credential consisting of username and password. IAM authenticates predefined system-based users with OTP-based authentication, biometrics, sometimes Password-less mechanisms such as QR codes, while PAM offers robustness in access controls with adaptive authentication mechanism. It uses unique verifying parameters such as geo-location, IP address, biometric data or even typing speed of the privileged user to ensure that the user is genuine.

Seamless Monitoring: Continuous monitoring of the end-user activities is an essential security component of IAM, so as for PAM. It helps organizations to ensure that the suspicious activities are identified and notified immediately after detection, so that the IT security team can take prompt action.

Reporting: As per the demands of the regulatory standards, comprehensive audit reports of every end-user activities is mandatory in any organization. IAM helps organizations with a detailed analytic report of every user activity to the target systems. PAM customizes the report with detailed analytics of every privileged access to the target systems/ applications. It helps IT managers in improving user decision making and enables auditors to assess regulatory compliance status of the organization.

How are they Different?

IAM and PAM have some major differences too. Here are some.

Conclusion

IAM helps enterprises to map which end-user can access which resources/ applications in the IT ecosystem. PAM, in this scenario, defines who has access permission or administrative access to IT resources. While addressing the IT security demands, enterprises ensure the access control management is successfully restored with centralized access management policy in place. With both IAM & PAM working together, it is convenient for any organization to manage overall access control policy in a secured manner.

What is the Principle of Least Privilege?

To begin with the term “Principle of least privilege” or “Least Privilege Approach” convey a similar meaning. Thus, we might use either of them while going on about the topic.

It is the notion of information security, which offers a minimum level of access to a user. While working in such an environment, you will need to seek access permissions quite frequently. It is necessary to keep your network system away from the risk of phishing.

Like any other multifarious segment of cybersecurity, Least Privilege principle too, accompanies several foundational principles. The most notable amongst them are – integrity, confidentiality, and availability.

Therefore, you can implement it on both network systems as well as connected devices. This way, you can prevent the non-human applications from availing anything more than the requisite access.

Background of the Principle of Least Privilege

The background of Least Privilege Principle is somewhat unknown and obscure. However, the notion came to life during the 1970s with Jerome Saltzer, an American Computer Scientist. Later, Peter J. Denning offered a broader insight on the topic in his research paper.

Historically, the earliest touch of this principle was found in the Login C source code. It used to have a set of super-user permissions, which the system administrator could only access. Once they became unnecessary, the system dismissed them through a non-zero argument.

Privileged Elevation and Delegation Management (PEDM)

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How to Implement?

There have been several reports conducted on the subject of least privilege. Hence, the usage of the same has also changed quite methodically over the years. Currently, most organizations are implementing and using this system through the following methods –

• Location-based Access: The location-based access setting is pretty specific, as it can bound your employee to use a critical system from a particular location. For instance, you may use it on your organization’s database so that no one can use it when they aren’t in the office.
• Group-based Access: Managing user accesses for over a thousand employees can be somewhat tricky. However, this is where least privilege, or more specifically, an IAM tool, comes in. With this security program, you can offer user access based on an individual’s role or job. With this principle, it will be easier for you to remove someone’s accessing ability when they leave your organization.
• As-Needed Access: An organization may need specific data almost anytime. Nonetheless, if you have set up your least privilege principle manually, then accessing it would be troublesome. So, to avoid such issues, you will need to elevate your company’s privileges on an as-needed basis. This way, it will be easier for you to revert to the standard accounts without suffering any consequences.
• Machine-based Access: Most companies use this system as an alternative to location-based access. With it, you can make it possible for some selected machines to get all the classified information. If someone uses any other computer to perform the same task, they won’t find anything.

Lastly, you can also create single-use accessible accounts with the Least Privilege Approach. It is a much safer option, as you can use the passcode only a single time to access the data you need. If anyone wants to get the same information again, they will need to ask the administrator about a new password again.

What are the Benefits of the Least Privilege Approach?

Since the last decade, the prominence of cybercrime has increased massively. According to a report, almost 88% of organizations in the world have already experienced phishing attempts. Hence, using a single tool to bolster your system would not be enough. In addition to it, you will also need to implement at least one least privilege-based program. Here are the benefits you may get if you do so –

• With the Least Privilege Approach, you can shut the access of critical databases or systems almost exclusively. Therefore, in a way, it can offer better security, especially against human errors and other phishing attempts.
• If only a limited amount of people use a particular system, it will have a lower risk of attracting a malware program. Even if something malicious enters the environment, it will be contained in a specific area due to inaccessibility.
• By limiting malware infestation on your system, you can make it almost invulnerable to sudden crashes. Therefore, the whole work system will be much more stable and efficient. It can be pretty advantageous for you if your company owns a large chain of network structures.
• The principle of Least Privilege is usually implemented on an audited system. Therefore, the scope of performing an audit will minimize drastically for your organization. Moreover, you will not have to undergo various standard regulations if you use the Least Privilege Approach.
• Finally, by removing local administrator rights from your system, you can also minimize the helpdesk calls effectively. Additionally, if you enable as-needed access, you can also increase the productiveness of the users.

Conclusion

As mentioned before, almost every information security system is complicated and multi-faceted. Hence, if you don’t have extensive knowledge about it, make sure not to implement it alone. The same goes for the Least Privilege Approach as well. So, if you wish to include it in your security system, be sure to ask an expert. They will offer the best possible security objective.

Building & protecting Identity

Who does not love his/ her identity? Everyone on this planet loves to create his/ her identity that can be exclusive. Not only that, every individual irrespective of geography, race and education looks for a commendable identity of their progeny. Moreover, we intermittently struggle to protect our identity from bad-mouthing, false accusations, reputation maligning. A person’s identity or image influences the identity of his/ her nearer and dearer ones.

And the same thing goes with digital identities

Digital identity is the online existence of any personal data and organizational data. Just like our personal identity, digital identities face threats from cyber-criminals. In the case of digital identity, we protect our digital presence from cyber-threats. 

Some Examples

Today, digital identity is formed immediately after a child is born. Today, the government authorities of any country records the details of every child’s birth in digital mode. In addition to the child’s details, the records also include the parents’ personal details, their communication details, social security numbers (PAN/ AAdhar Number in India) which is highly case-sensitive. 

A school kid today has his/ her digital identity in the form of an email ID that is used to access virtual classes, submit online assignments or appear for examinations. So if it is compromised, then the student could suffer unprecedented misuse of his/ her identity. 

Similarly, if it happens in the enterprise IT ecosystem, what could be the consequences? The IT infrastructure of a typical enterprise comprises hundreds or thousands of identities. These identities provide access to confidential information. В сфере выпечки и кондитерских изделий семена каннабиса становятся популярным добавлением, придающим блюдам особый вкус и питательную ценность. Это делает их привлекательными для любителей здоровой пищи.

From a corporate IT security point of view, managing, controlling and monitoring identities is highly imperative to secure confidential business information.

Any kind of compromise of the digital identities might wreak havoc on organizations with:  

• Data Breach
• Cyber Espionage
• Identity theft
• Malign of Enterprise goodwill
• Application misuse 

Digital Identity Governance

Just like all the attention we pay to protecting our personal identity, organizations must ensure adequate safeguards to protect digital identity. And that starts with digital identity governance. Solutions such as Identity and Access Management (IDAM) and Privileged Access Management (PAM) are the most critical components of digital identity management and governance. These solutions offer a comprehensive overview of all the identities that exist in the IT ecosystem. The solutions ensure authenticity, accountability, and scrutiny of every digital identity. 

Conclusion

In the era of digitalization, human identity has been digitized for ease of access and convenience. While we are getting habituated to digital money, attending virtual meetings, conducting online classes or even seeking medical assistance from doctors, digital identity has become a must in our daily life. It can unlock solutions or services for a wide range of basic and empowering services for individuals. However, to make the whole digital experience seamless, digital identity governance is absolutely essential. 

The ‘villainous’ Covid19 turned to be a great ‘teacher’ for global organizations.

The pandemic, besides badly impacting the global health and disrupting normal business processes, resulted in a wave of cyber-attacks as businesses found themselves in a challenging situation. Remote access, authentication, access management (AM) were some of the issues that kept security and risk professionals on toes as they tried to tread a balance between business continuity and IT security.

In this time of adversity, ARCON continued in its mission to propagate the message – how to ensure cyber resilience and cyber security. We continued to work hard to make our stack of products more robust in terms of security and functionality. In addition, ARCON, being the torchbearer of the intense mission of cyber hygiene, has surpassed several milestones to stand tall among global IT risk-predictive solution providers.

In the last few months, ARCON has added a good number of feathers in its cap to reemphasize its growing traction globally especially among the analysts’ community.

ARCON recognized as a Challenger in 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Privileged Access Management and placed third in the Gartner Critical Capabilities report

After a huge shift of demand from risk-preventive technologies to risk-predictive technologies, Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution has acquired a pivotal role in most of the industries to ensure a robust security of the IT ecosystem.

As mentioned by Gartner, “By 2024, 50% of organizations will have implemented a just in time (JIT) privileged access model, which eliminates standing privileges, experiencing 80% fewer privileged breaches than those that don’t.

 By 2024, 65% of organizations that use privileged task automation features will save 40% on staff costs for IT operations for IaaS and PaaS, and will experience 70% fewer breaches than those that don’t.”

ARCON was placed in the Challengers Quadrant of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Privileged Access Management (PAM), 2020. We almost knocked the Leaders’ quadrant. We strongly believe that the Privileged Access Management report is a comprehensive guide for global IT security professionals to find out why ARCON | PAM continues to be the best-in-class PAM vendor. The Gartner Magic Quadrant research report evaluates a vendor’s ability to execute and its vision. Likewise, ARCON performed remarkably well in the Gartner Critical Capabilities report for Privileged Access Management, which evaluates a vendor’s ability in terms of key features and capabilities required to meet day-to-day enterprise use cases. We were placed third in the Product and Service Use Cases category for large and mid-size enterprises.

ARCON rated as Innovation Leader

 KuppingerCole Analysts published the “2020 KuppingerCole Leadership Compass for Privileged Access Management (PAM)” report this year and ARCON has been recognized as an Innovation leader by Paul Fisher, the lead analyst. A robust Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution, as revealed by the research firm, has started to experience the highest demand in IT security today. In this ‘new normal’ work scenario, almost all the global organizations are striving for better IT governance to avoid any cyber incident, and PAM is the must-have tool to ensure the best cyber hygiene. Additionally, ARCON was placed as  a ‘Challenger in the product leadership, market leadership and overall ratings.

ARCON enters the Forrester Wave for Privileged Identity Management 2020

In the report Forrester Wave: Privileged Identity Management (PIM), Q4 2020, the lead analyst, Sean Ryan has proclaimed that the major global vendors of PIM provides a unique user experience and address the requirements of cloud, DevOps, bots, IoT and PAM use cases. ARCON is proud to have made into the wave report this year.

CIO Insider has enlisted ARCON as one of the “10 most recommended Telecom Solutions Providers 2020”

Some of the world’s biggest telecom companies trust ARCON | PAM to ensure robust security. Observing the current market trends, CIO Insider has enlisted ARCON as one of the “10 most recommended Telecom Solutions Providers 2020”. The panel of CIOs, CEOs, VCs, Analysts and top editorial teams, has voiced their opinion that ARCON is one of the companies that is “committed in offering the most reliable and high-speed telecom solutions, helping businesses and customers achieve their long term goals.”

ARCON bagged the coveted GEC Award in Dubai

ARCON bagged the coveted GEC (Global Enterprise Connect) Award in 2020 for being the “Top Vendor in Secure Identity Solutions” in Dubai on December 2020. It was the 7th edition of the Awards by GEC Media, organized by ‘Enterprise Channels’, MEA and ‘Business Transformation’ as the official business partner. ARCON takes the pride for being identified as the most deserving brand of the year and this prestigious feat is the proof of determination, dedication and efforts of team ARCON towards enterprise IT security services.

Other NEW Business Associations

ARCON always believes in “Sell the Problem you Solve, not the Product”! This strong belief drives ARCON’s journey. And some of the great organizations continued to repose faith in ARCON. Some of the key acquisitions include:

• A global telecom giant chose ARCON | PAM to secure more than 200,000 devices
• A Major MSP from MEA region secured their distributed data centers with ARCON | PAM
• Top Insurance brand in Sri Lanka trusted ARCON to secure their IT assets
• One of the popular Insurance brand in India opted both ARCON | PAM & ARCON | UBA
• Top brand in Utilities in MEA region opted ARCON | PAM over the rest
• A Government organization from Eastern Europe selected ARCON to ensure secured access policy
• A highly popular bank from Africa chose ARCON | PAM over the rest to protect privileged accounts
• A Popular Insurance brand from MEA region trusted on ARCON to ensure robust IT security
• A non-profit European organization in Europe preferred ARCON | PAM solution for the security of their data assets
• Top financial service provider in India found ARCON as the best-fit brand for their requirements
• Top bank from APAC region found ARCON as the most suitable solution for their need
• A Real Estate giant from MEA region chose to deploy ARCON | PAM
• Top Insurance brand in India selected ARCON | UBA as the most trustworthy vendor to monitor ever user activity

Final Words

ARCON, as always remains enthusiastic and optimistic about growth, is foreseeing a sea of opportunities in 2021 as the world has already turned its eyes towards remote security, user behaviour analytics, zero trust network access and more. (refer to our earlier blog on this forecast) ARCON is a complete IT security package under one roof and global organizations find ARCON as a one-stop solution for protecting endpoints, privileged accounts, and mission-critical applications.

ARCON is a leading enterprise risk control solutions provider, specializing in risk-predictive technologies. ARCON | User Behaviour Analytics enables to monitor end-user activities in real time. ARCON | Privileged Access Management reinforces access control and mitigates data breach threats. ARCON | Secure Compliance Management is a vulnerability assessment tool.

However, there’s an issue. While most cybercriminals tend to use new tactics for preparing their attacks, their overall strategy generally stays the same. Therefore, if you know even a little bit about the methods, then you can easily prevent them. Also, you can include a privileged access management system (PAM) in your infrastructure to track and predict the operations of the risky profiles.

Nonetheless, you still need to be wary of these attacks and learn more about their prevention methods, such as using an identity access management system. And, in this case, the following section will help you out. So, let’s get started!

1.    Traffic Interception

Traffic interception, also called eavesdropping, usually occurs when a third-party module intercepts the data, which is exchanged between a host and user. The stolen information tends to vary on the details shared by the two parties. But, in most cases, the hackers attempt to uncover the login details or other invaluable data, such as passwords of privileged identity management, from the user.

Prevention: Traffic interception can be mitigated by avoiding websites, which do not employ HTML5. Moreover, you can also encrypt your network with a VPN to shadow yourself from sneaky hackers. As a host, you can use identity access management system or UBA (User Behaviour Analytics) to assess the actions of your end-user. It, in turn, will help you to find out if he/she is the reason behind the stolen data.

2.    Malware

Malware is widely considered as the most common and prolific type of security threat. In the year 2019, the digital world encountered around 9.9 million malware attacks, which is mind-boggling. But what is malware? Well, it is, in essence, an unwanted program, which can enter through e-mail and installs itself on your PC automatically. Moreover, it can cause various unusual behaviours like deleting files, obstructing access to a specific program, and stealing data.

Prevention: In case of malware mitigation, taking a proactive stance would be the perfect defence. You can install an anti-malware application on your PC or system to take care of this issue. Moreover, avoiding non-verified websites, too, might help you in this aspect. Be sure to improve your privileged account management system in this aspect as well.

3.    DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service)

The cyberattacks, which can compromise and interfere with the availability of systems and networks, belongs to the DDoS category. In this case, the hacker usually overloads a particular server with a substantial amount of user traffic. It, sequentially, causes lag in the network and slows down its overall performance.

Prevention: To stop DDoS attacks, you will, first, need to identify the incoming malicious traffic. In this case, using identity management in cloud computing can help you out. However, if the hacker is using a lot of IPs, then you might need to perform offline maintenance to your server.

4.    Crimeware

The category of Crimeware consists of any malware program that is used for committing cybercrime. The most prominent example of it is ransomware, which has grown by almost 350% in the last few years (in 2018). It is quick and easy to capitalize on the attack. Thus, the victim does not even get the time to react to it at all. The ransomware attacks are more common on cryptocurrency websites and affect the identity and access management module in most cases.

Prevention: The Crimeware assaults can be mitigated by updating software programs regularly. Furthermore, you can also implement a privileged access management system on your infrastructure to monitor your crucial data and assess the presence of anomalies instantly. It is a great system to detect malware in your data.

5.    Phishing

In truth, phishing scams are an older approach to cybercrime. But, if it is done correctly, then it can cause massive damage to the victim. In this aspect, the victim gets an e-mail or message, which asks for sensitive data, like a password. Sometimes, the phishing e-mail might masquerade as something official and legitimate.

Prevention: Phishing messages tend to have a lot of typos and spelling errors. So, if you have gotten a mail content with many childish mistakes, then avoiding it can help you to get rid of phishing. Using identity and access management solutions can be beneficial for you in this case as well.

Conclusion

While the strategies remain the same, the complexity of the cyber-attacks is still rising daily. Thus, being cautious about everything and implementing proper security measures, such as access management system, on your infrastructure can be an ideal option for you.

The sanctity of data security depends on the preparedness of organizations in areas of centralized policy, access control management, real-time monitoring of the users, robust password management and more. Hence, we are witnessing the fast-adoption of PAM.

However, deployment of an enterprise-class Privileged Access Management (PAM) is never an easy task. Enterprises struggle to effectively implement it because a modern-day enterprise’s IT environment is complex. PAM projects get stalled or are ineffectively implemented because there is often a wide mismatch between the IT infrastructure requirements and solution offerings. Sometimes product architecture is very complex. Deploying a PAM solution becomes a nightmare when it has too many moving parts or is compatible only with let’s say windows endpoints. Again, a solution’s inability to support cloud or hybrid environments hampers scaling-up of the IT infrastructure. Implementation becomes a headache if a solution fails to seamlessly integrate with disparate IT components. Moreover, inadequate documentation, a bad user interface, or a counterintuitive administrative experience makes a PAM project a failure.

Why should your organization invest in ARCON | PAM on priority?

Here is a quick rundown of the challenges that IT security teams face while deploying PAM in their network. Additionally, we will see why more than 300 global enterprises prefer ARCON | PAM to ensure comprehensive security for their business assets.

• Lucidity in accessing servers and speed: This is one of the common challenges that organizations face while deploying PAM solutions. There are many global players, who have shown discomfort about slow server access during and post-deployment of PAM. However, for ARCON | PAM, we come across opinions like, “We can access the servers very fast and time saving tools..the product is good and user friendly… we are daily using daily reboot activity around 300 servers...”
• Scalability: This is another constraint for organizations while deploying PAM or renewing contracts of deployment. While scaling up the product services or features, very often organizations face an unwanted set back in terms of promptness and user-friendliness. ARCON | PAM, on the other hand, is serving the mid-size and large enterprises with a highly scalable architecture whenever required. The AVP – IT of one of our clients from the Finance industry opines, “Any kind of addition in the privileged accounts or any kind of scalability whenever required, ARCON team was prompt in action and resolved the queries and requirements in minimum time.”

• Smooth Implementation, Execution and Support: The IT department of any organization is always skeptical about incorporating new technologies in their daily operations. The drastic changes in the pattern of IT threats are forcing them to seek the assistance from a robust solution that could notify the administrators about any anomaly in real-time. PAM solution is the best contender for this. However, the IT administration department spends sleepless nights when it comes to implementing a new solution for their IT ecosystem. However, a smooth implementation might not be a reality considering if the support system is bad. ARCON | PAM in this respect has won confidence from many IT professionals as we see here: “ARCON is providing fantastic support during implementation phase. Along with excellent solution design that integrates with our business requirement it helps for business growth as well. The team is very skilled and helpful”.

• Customizability and Flexibility: This is another important factor which many large and mid-scale organizations look forward earnestly. On multiple occasions, it is observed that organizations prefer to customize the security solutions and services to perfectly fit into their ‘exact requirement’. While many vendors stumble upon this requirement, ARCON | PAM is a solution that is capable enough to mould the technology and features as per the ‘requirement’ and make the clients realize their value for money. One of the IT security managers from the Finance industry said, “We are using ARCOS from more than 4 years and have always seen terrific support from their back-end team in case of any customization or enhancement.” 

• Enhance Productivity, Performance and Compliance: This is the ultimate objective of any organization while implementing information security solutions in their IT infrastructure. ARCON | PAM never allows any kind interruption in the overall IT performance and always tries to enhance productivity with the benefits that are offered along with the solution. With this, the organizations are even able to comply with the standard global regulations. Even the analyst community speaks loud about this solution: “ARCOS Privileged Access Management Suite is very easy to manage and control on the access for IT Team, which helps for the Compliance in the Industry.”

Lastly, we would like to address that ARCON scored 3.45/ 5 for Mid-size and large enterprise use cases in Gartner 2020 report on Critical Capabilities for Privileged Access Management (PAM). Some of the key advantages of this solution are as below: (extract from the report)

• ARCON offers above-average privilege task automation (PTA) functionality through its automation script manager component.
• Discovery capabilities are above average, including AD, network devices, cloud, databases and some applications.
• It supports high availability and load balancing approaches with its appliances and software.
• It offers an encrypted email approach for a “break-glass” capability.
• Application allow/ deny/ isolate approaches are available, as is file integrity monitoring.
• ARCON offers smart session management, which flags access to high-risk systems, and good governance and administration through its user governance portal.
• Password management for both interactive and software accounts is supported by the ARCON vault.
• The logging and reporting capability is average to above average, with 90 reports out of the box.
• ARCON offers well above average performance for session management.
• In addition, ARCON offers a native identity analytics product called Knight Analytics, for UBA capabilities applied to PAM sessions

Disclaimer: Gartner, Critical Capabilities for Privileged Access Management, 4 August 2020, Michael Kelley, Felix Gaehtgens, Abhyuday Data
Gartner Peer Insights reviews constitute the subjective opinions of individual end users based on their own experiences and do not represent the views of Gartner or its affiliates.
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

KuppingerCole evaluated many vendors in this 2020 Leadership Compass report and has given a comprehensive view of the overall PAM marketplace. The strengths and advantages of ARCON | Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution were aptly summarized by KuppingerCole, which includes:

1. Design that works well with strong focus on compliance
2. Feature-rich comprehensive solution
3. Soft OTP and Biometric authentication
4. Readily integrable with standard SIEM and help-desk tools
5. Ease of Deployment and Administration
6. Available as a hosted and managed service and PAM as a solution

According to the report, “ARCON’s ability to develop customized connectors for password and account management for legacy applications and systems could be an advantage for organizations that deem legacy infrastructure important to support critical business functions”.

Innovation

By applying constant innovation into the product, ARCON | PAM today offers one of the best-in-class functionalities and user experience. Having included in the most innovative companies in the PAM space, Kuppingercole Leadership Compass has reinstated the fact that ARCON relies on a customer-centric approach. Over the years, ARCON has established trust amongst its global clientele base and created a competitive edge in the market. It goes exactly with what KuppingerCole has mentioned about Innovation:

“Innovation is not about delivering a constant flow of new releases. Rather, innovative companies take a customer-oriented upgrade approach, delivering customer-requested cutting-edge features, while maintaining compatibility with previous versions.”

There were several parameters associated with the ratings in the Leadership Compass. ARCON received positive ratings on parameters such as security, functionality, interoperability and deployment. In addition to that, ARCON | PAM has been rated as “strong positive” on product usability parameter. Conventionally, it addresses two aspects of usability which include end-user view and administrative view. In both ways, ARCON | PAM has claimed its product superiority. Not just good documentation, ARCON | PAM has strong access control features that elevates the overall risk-predictive and risk-preventive performance of the solution.

There are other determiners in this report like Market position and Product rating, where ARCON obtained a Challenger position. ARCON has already propelled its way towards a promising future in the global PAM space and will continue to enhance the product as per the latest trends of IT security based on AI and ML. In line with our strategy, KuppingerCole has mentioned,

“ARCON is an ambitious company and has plans in its pipeline to develop further AI and facial recognition capabilities into its PAM product suite.”

To know more about ARCON | PAM, email at info@arconnet.com or visit: www.arconnet.com.

ARCON is a leading enterprise risk control solutions provider, specializing in risk-predictive technologies. ARCON | User Behaviour Analytics enables to monitor end-user activities in real time. ARCON | Privileged Access Management reinforces access control and mitigates data breach threats. ARCON | Secure Compliance Management is a vulnerability assessment tool.

Shared and Distributed Environment

The recent malware attack incident at one of the Nuclear Power Plants in the South of India proved that unmonitored and uncontrolled privileged accounts can cost heavily to an organization. A forensic investigation suggested that the infected system was used by a malicious user who connected to unauthorized internet for performing official administrative tasks. The breach highlights that the risks arising from unmonitored shared IT environment is huge. The ramifications of such incidents malign organizations’ financial position and reputation.

ARCON | PAM would have ensured that the privileged activities were monitored in real-time and the malicious activities were mitigated before any disaster.

Migrating Data to Cloud

A popular Thai Airlines company suffered a massive breach where personal data of 21 million passengers were compromised. After investigating the overall data security structure in the organization, it was found that the customers used to get unsolicited calls asking to verify personal information. After a few customers drew the attention of the organization regarding the calls, it was found that the cloud vendor of this Airline company had several suspicious activities which eventually resulted in the breach.

Regarding this, Nasscom has come up with a very interesting statistics which shows that the Cloud Security market will reach almost $7.1 by 2020 in India. Cloud adoption is going in such a rampant speed that most of the organizations would invariably invite cyber crooks to exploit the vulnerabilities if adequate security measures are not taken. Migrating IT workloads to a cloud service provider (CSP) offers scalability, flexibility, and efficiency. However, at the same time, it increases risks of compromised third-parties and malicious insiders.

ARCON | PAM ensures that the third-party and malicious insider risks are mitigated as the solution reinforces authentication and authorization mechanism.

Managed Service Provider (MSP)

The infamous and shocking breach incident in one of the major renowned international IT giants proves that cyber threats arising from Managed Service Providers (MSPs) are a big concern today. Organizations opt for MSP (Managed Service Providers) to ensure uninterrupted business operations although, the major security challenge with MSP lies with the uncontrolled and unmonitored access to privileged accounts. The same incident happened with this IT giant where the organization was bound to share the privileged account details to the third-party users, which turned out to be fatal because there was no third-party monitoring mechanism in place to ensure the prevention of unauthorized access. Despite having data security assurance from the service provider, the organization had to suffer because there was no security initiatives from their own.

ARCON | PAM would have ensured that the third-party users were authenticated before performing any task and their activities would have been monitored in real-time to prevent any suspicious activity.

Regulatory Mandates

The global social media giant Facebook has been slapped a fine of $2.2 billion as per the GDPR act for violating standard regulatory mandates. The company stored confidential and private user passwords insecurely in plain text. GDPR commission was notified that millions of passwords of the users of Facebook, Facebook Lite and even Instagram were stored in plain text format in internal servers without the knowledge and consent of the users. Thus, GDPR had to commence a statutory enquiry regarding the same and eventually had to impose the penalty.

Apart, HIPAA has unveiled a fact that almost 51% of global healthcare organizations fail to comply with the mandates of HIPAA. This means, more than half of the organizations storing digital records of the patients are not ensuring the security of those patients’ private information and are not compliant to standard HIPAA norms. For instance, Inmediata Health Group, Corporation, San Juan, Puerto Rico was penalized by HIPAA for affecting more than 15,65,338 patients private information due to some unauthorized access.

Once deployed, ARCON | PAM ensures that all these standard global regulatory compliances are met. Data Integrity, data security, access control and password rotation are also maintained and the organizations follow the mandates to avoid any kind of breaches.

Conclusion

All the above incidents give alert messages to global organizations. These incidents urgently demand a plan of action, which is to reinforce best privileged practices with the help of Privileged Access Management. However, many organizations today are far from being equipped with a robust risk-predictive and risk-preventive solution that could safeguard their digital assets. With digital assets increasing due to digitalization of IT operations, the number of Privileged users administering roots accounts, database, applications and network devices keeps on rising. Hence, these accounts need to be managed, controlled and monitored in real-time so that any bad actor in the IT environment – be it a malicious insider or a compromised third-party element – can not abuse data by gaining unauthorized access to critical systems.

ARCON is a leading enterprise risk control solutions provider, specializing in risk-predictive technologies. ARCON | User Behaviour Analytics enables to monitor end-user activities in real-time. ARCON | Privileged Access Management reinforces access control and mitigates data breach threats. ARCON | Secure Compliance Management is a vulnerability assessment tool.

A growing number of digital identities, however, has opened up the gates for cybercriminals. As digital identities are identifications used for connections or transactions on network and internet, hackers and malicious corporate insiders are always on a lookout to abuse them for gaining unauthorized access targeting personal and critical information assets.

One of the biggest sources of data breach are privileged identities and accounts.These identities and accounts are extremely vulnerable to abuse as they provide access to critical systems and sensitive information. These accounts are found everywhere. On premises data centers, on cloud where organizations manage hundreds of applications and databases, network assets (routers firewalls) including operational technologies (SCADA, ICS).

In a typical use case scenario, malicious insiders and compromised third party elements can take advantage when organizations pay scant attention to the rising number of privileged users in an enterprise IT environment.

Unaccounted surge in the number of endpoints and privileged accounts, consequently, provides potential ways to the compromised insiders and malicious third parties to gain access to enterprise networks and critical systems.

The threat is compounded by the fact that that these privileged accounts are often created in a ad-hoc manner. In this backdrop, there is a complete mismanagement of privileges. Absence of authorization, authentication, audit trails, monitoring and controlling of privileges puts the entire IT infrastructure under grave risk. A modern day enterprise requires a centralized and role based privileged access management that automates the entitlement and validation process including privileged access and services. These privileged access practices help in managing the lifecycle of privileged identities.

Think about how difficult would it be for the IT security team to keep a track on privileged account activities when there is no proper mechanism in place to manage and monitor privileged accounts?

Privileged Access Management offers your IT security team a sure-fire way to reinforce the security posture. It enables them to seamlessly manage the Privilege Account Lifecycle by.

1. From centrally administering and defining rule-based access policy to auto-onboarding of privileged users, your
enterprise privileged data security will never be compromised as every access will be after thorough validation

2. Auto-discovery of all privileged accounts and devices to ensure every activity is documented and no privilege
account is abused

3. No more emails and tedious documentations. Gain operational efficiency. Workflow matrix will enable to
configure approval process for user/user groups and service groups

4. Audit trails and customized reports of every privileged access to meet regulatory standards

ARCON is a leading enterprise risk control solutions provider, specializing in risk-predictive technologies. ARCON | User Behaviour Analytics enables to monitor end-user activities in real time. ARCON | Privileged Access Management reinforces access control and mitigates data breach threats. ARCON | Secure Compliance Management is a vulnerability assessment tool.