Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1387622
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 27 JUNE 2021 12 COMMERCIAL Effective password and privilege THE rapid growth of the digi- tal era has proven challenging for organizations to effectively manage and secure their sys- tems and in turn, their infra- structure. Determined human adversar- ies consistently target account credentials, that are usernames and passwords, in a persistent effort to gain foothold to the internal infrastructure of or- ganizations. Ensuing mitiga- tion techniques introduced by organizations generally include a password management solu- tion, effectively increasing the security posture of the known and managed domain and priv- ileged accounts. The management of privi- leged account credentials has become increasingly challeng- ing due to the rapid growth and breadth of systems, var- ying environment platforms from on-premise, to cloud and hybrid-cloud solutions as well as the rise of the remote-work culture which has provided further opportunities for threat actors to capitalize upon. Password management solu- tions which have been em- ployed for over the past dec- ade in an attempt to mitigate threats associated with pass- word storage and manage- ment, have become inadequate at effectively managing risks imposed by the modern-day threat actor. This is mainly due to the undiscovered privileged user accounts which are not being stored and managed by pass- word vaulting solutions. Privi- leged accounts are considered as one of the greatest risks of an organization given their high authorized access, making them prime targets to perform malice. As a result of the constant- ly evolving threat landscape, a holistic approach to account, password and privilege man- agement is being established by leading organizations, re- ferred to as Privileged Access Management (PAM). PAM solutions bridge the gap be- tween contemporary password management solutions and privileged access to provide greater management, visibility and control of privilege with- in the digital environment. To effectively manage the threat landscape relating to privileged accounts it is essential that all privileged accounts are stored and managed within the PAM solution. Unfortunately, administra- tors are rarely in a position to ascertain that all privileged accounts are onboarded to the PAM solution and for this rea- son leading solutions offer dis- covery engines. These provide the capability to automatically discover privileged accounts "Password management solutions which have been employed for over the past decade in an attempt to mitigate threats associated with password storage and management" Ryan Bugeja