Centrify Ups Its Privileged Identity Management Game

Centrify is enhancing its privileged identity management (PIM) solution to minimize the attack surface and controlling privileged access to the hybrid enterprise. According to a press release from the company, Centrify’s new capabilities enable organizations to move from static, long-lived privilege assignments to a ‘just-in-time’ model, in which advanced monitoring detects and alerts the creation of backdoor accounts in real-time.

As we all know,  High-privilege access may be the most sensitive aspect of IT. Administrative accounts have the ability to make sweeping and fundamental changes to IT systems on which the business may depend. If misused, these capabilities can cause massive damage, from security threats and compliance violations to incidents that tarnish the reputation of the business itself.

According to The Forrester Wave™: Privileged Identity Management, Q3 2016, 80 percent of breaches leverage privileged credentials to gain access to the organization. The increasingly hybrid nature of infrastructure, driven by the adoption of cloud-based workloads, is driving the need to secure privileged access across on-premises, private-cloud and public cloud infrastructure and apps with a single solution. And while most PIM solutions have traditionally focused on vaulting the credentials for shared accounts on-premises, password vaults alone do not provide the level of privileged access security required to stop the breach.

“Data breaches are happening at an alarming rate and to stop them Centrify is taking a unique approach to controlling privileged access in the hybrid enterprise that simplifies the implementation of PIM best practices and strengthens an organization’s risk posture,” said Bill Mann, chief product officer at Centrify. “By contrast, password vaults alone are not enough. Best practices require organizations add and integrate point products to the vault, which leaves gaps in security and increases risk. We’ve closed those gaps with an integrated solution that combines password vaulting with brokering of identities, MFA enforcement, and just-enough privilege, all while securing remote access and monitoring all privileged sessions.”

New additions to Centrify’s platform intended to help solve the PIM problem include:

• Establish Identity Assurance. Centrify ensures accountability by having users log in as themselves and attributing all activity to the individual. Its advanced host-based auditing capabilities now include process-level monitoring in addition to existing shell-based monitoring to attribute all activity to the individual instead of a shared account or alias. This new advanced monitoring adds a layer of security that is virtually impossible to spoof.
• Limit Lateral Movement: Centrify enables organizations to reduce the attack surface by governing privileged access and ensuring users’ privileges only apply on the approved server. Now you can require access approvals for role assignment and make them short-lived. Centrify’s proven host-based privilege management ensures that the user’s approved privileges apply only to the target system, and cannot be used across the network on other computers. And if credentials are compromised, hackers and malware will not have the privileges that would allow them to wreak havoc within your network.
• Institute Least Privilege: Centrify now uniquely governs access to both privileged accounts and privilege elevation via roles enabling organizations to implement true cross-platform least privilege access. Centrify lowers the risk of a security breach by granting just-in-time privilege and just-enough-privilege through temporary and time-bound access that leverages request and approval workflows. Audit trails and compliance reporting capabilities now include who has access, who approved that access and how that access was used across privileged accounts and privileged roles.
• Monitor Privileged Use: Centrify now monitors for the creation of backdoors whose existence make privileged access to infrastructure convenient instead of secure. Centrify’s advanced monitoring capabilities detect the growing threatscape and alert in real time through SIEM integration on rogue creation of SSH keys that enable privileged access that bypasses the password vault.