Are you using the cloud or thinking about switching? There is no doubt that multi-cloud and hybrid environments offer many benefits to organizations. However, the flexibility, scalability and efficiency of the cloud comes with a significant risk – an expanded attack surface. The decentralization associated with the use of multi-cloud environments can also lead to limited visibility of user activities and poor access management.
Privileged accounts with access to critical systems and sensitive data are among the most vulnerable elements in cloud settings. If mismanaged, these accounts open the door to unauthorized access, potential malicious activity, and data leakage. This is why strong Privileged Access Management (PAM) is indispensable.
PAM plays an essential role in solving the security challenges of complex infrastructures by providing strict access control and managing the lifecycle of privileged accounts. By using PAM in hybrid and cloud environments, you not only protect your sensitive assets—you also meet compliance requirements and improve overall security.
To protect your organization’s hybrid or multi-cloud environment, consider implementing the following PAM best practices:
1. Centralize access control
Centralized access will take the burden of ongoing maintenance and oversight off your administrators, while keeping user accounts secure. This ensures the same level of access control consistency across your entire IT infrastructure, ensuring that no access point is left undetected or unprotected.
When looking for your own a solution for managing privileged accesslook for those that support your organization’s platforms, operating systems, and cloud environments. Try to find a single solution that can help you manage access to every endpoint, server and cloud workstation.
2. Limit access to important resources
You can reduce the large attack surface of complex hybrid and cloud infrastructures by applying the principle of least privilege (PoLP) to your IT environments. PoLP means giving users the access they need to perform their duties, limiting the exposure of sensitive data to potential malicious activity and exposure. Regular user access reviews can support your PoLP implementation.
You can take this principle even further and implement a just-in-time (JIT) approach to access management. JIT PAM provides access upon request and for a limited time sufficient to perform a specific task. This approach is particularly useful when providing temporary access to external users such as partners and third-party service providers.
3. Implement role-based access control
Role-based access control (RBAC) provides access to assets based on the roles of users in your organization, aligning permissions with the principle of least privilege. In complex hybrid and multi-cloud settings where resources are distributed across many environments, RBAC simplifies access management by centrally defining roles and applying them consistently. In this access control model, each role has specific permissions, which helps minimize unnecessary access rights and prevents misuse of privileges.
To effectively implement RBAC, your organization must carefully analyze the job responsibilities of your employees and define precise roles with appropriate access permissions. Consider regularly reviewing and updating established roles to reflect any changes in responsibilities and organizational structures.
4. Adopt zero-trust security principles
Adoption zero trust in hybrid and multi-cloud environments involves implementing a framework in which no user, device, or application is trusted, regardless of whether they are inside or outside the network perimeter. For example, implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA) will help you verify that users are who they say they are, protecting privileged accounts even if their credentials are compromised.
Zero trust also involves segmenting your resources. Segmentation is critical in environments where applications and resources are interconnected and shared because it prevents lateral movement. With this approach, even if one part of your network is compromised, it will be difficult for an attacker to reach other network segments. Segmentation also applies to privileged accounts, as you can isolate them from different parts of your system to reduce the impact of potential breaches.
5. Increase visibility into user activity
If you don’t have a clear view of what’s happening in your hybrid and cloud environment, you become vulnerable to human error, privilege abuse, account compromise, and ultimately data breach. By implementing PAM solutions with user activity monitoring capabilities, you can gain visibility into your IT perimeter and detect threats in a timely manner.
To improve your monitoring processes, consider deploying software that alerts you to suspicious user activity and allows you to respond to threats. Integrating your PAM software with SIEM systems is also beneficial as it provides a centralized view of security events and privileged user activities.
6. Protect your privileged credentials
Credential theft is one of the costliest cybersecurity incidents, averaging $679,621 per incident, according to the Ponemon Institute’s 2023 Global Cost of Insider Risks Report. Because high-level accounts hold the keys to your most important assets, the damage from having their credentials compromised can be huge. That’s why their protection is critical to the security of all IT infrastructures, including hybrid and multi-cloud ones.
To protect privileged user credentials, develop a password management policy that describes how to protect, store, and use passwords. To enforce these policies, consider implementing a password management solution it will allow you to store passwords in secure storage, provide one-time credentials, and automate password preparation and rotation across all your cloud environments.
7. Provide cloud integration
Consider PAM solutions that seamlessly integrate with cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, using their built-in capabilities to more effectively manage privileged access.
By using privileged access management tools that integrate with cloud features such as IAM roles, API gateways, and secret management, your organization can reduce complexity and enable automation.
Protect complex IT environments with Syteca
Syteca is a comprehensive cybersecurity platform with robust capabilities to manage privileged access and user activity. Syteca PAM capabilities include account discovery, granular access provisioning, password management, two-factor authentication, privileged session recording, and more.
Syteca is designed to protect complex on-premise, cloud and hybrid IT infrastructures from insider risks, account compromises and other human-related threats. The list of platforms supported by Syteca includes cloud environments such as Amazon WorkSpaces and Microsoft Azure and virtualization platforms such as VMware Horizon and Microsoft Hyper-V. In addition, Syteca offers SaaS deployment for cost-effectiveness, automated maintenance and optimized scalability.
Watch an online demo or test Syteca’s capabilities in your IT infrastructure with a free 30-day trial!
