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How to mitigate misuse of Privileged Accounts

Misuse of privileged accounts is one of the burning threats for enterprises today. The detection process is time-consuming. Even if the organizations try to calculate the amount of loss incurred from these threats, it is never possible to get the exact figures because the overall damage is irrevocable – both financial and reputation-wise.

1. Controlling and monitoring Shared IDs

Very often, employees are given special additional privileges to perform “elevated responsibilities” beyond their normal responsibilities. In similar scenarios, organizations normally allow those users to share the common user IDs with other users. It is actually easier for organizations to share the IDs because it minimizes the requirement of adding/ deleting accounts. This approach is recommended to be least used since specific employee actions remain unknown. This anonymity gives the organization goosebumps to figure out the culprit behind malicious acts.

2. Multiple Access

Partners, vendors, clients or any third party are the components of digital workspace ecosystem. Therefore it is important to monitor the activities of third-party vendors if they have access to critical IT systems.

3. Password Management

Passwords if not rotated/ generated frequently and securely vaulted can wreak havoc to an organization. A malicious element compromised insider or third-party can misuse those to gain access to sensitive information. A highly matured password vault of ARCON generates strong and dynamic passwords that can be stored in a highly secured electronic vault. This storage methodology is secured enough to build up a virtual fortress to shield the attacks. Password Vault in PAM solution ensures that the enterprises can handle complex and dynamic changes including the necessary mandates.

4. Compliance

It is highly crucial for enterprises to enforce compliance policies as per industry norms like General Data Protection and Regulation (GDPR), Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). IT managers must have the unambiguous policies in place. The cost of data breach today is huge. It hits the brand equity, productivity including hefty financial penalties.

The bottom line

In order to mitigate this threat, an ideal approach is to build up a comprehensive strategy that meets the best practices involving privileged activities. There is a common myth that auditing privileged users are complicated. Instead, the fact is that it is never challenging if the real-time monitoring of the user activities is documented, privileged passwords/ credentials are frequently changed and securely vaulted whilst the access to critical systems is policy-based (granular access control and authenticated). It helps the administrators to maintain a complete vigilance of the privileged users and their activities. In addition, it helps to mitigate if anything suspicious is found in the network.


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.

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