Enterprise Password Management Software Closes The #1 Hole In Your Attack Surface

Strong passwords are an important security practice. But they aren’t enough to prevent a data breach.

Hackers use password cracking techniques, brute-force attacks and social engineering trickery to steal enterprise passwords. If they get their hands on a password that uses an authentication token (password hash), they can “pass-the-hash” to breach multiple systems without requiring multiple passwords.

Password management software for the enterprise uses security controls to prevent internal and external threats from capturing master passwords, credentials, secrets, tokens, and keys to gain access to confidential systems and data. These centralized password management systems can be on-premises or in the cloud. Most important is that they provide password security for all types of privileged accounts throughout your enterprise.

Automation makes enterprise password management possible

You simply can’t manage enterprise passwords manually and expect to have visibility and control or keep pace with changes in your organization. Consumer password protection tools don’t have the right capabilities and can’t scale to support an enterprise. Old-school enterprise password management software is complex, expensive to manage and slows down your systems. The more complex the software, the higher the risk of failure.

Enterprise password management solutions are much more than a “password manager” or a “password vault”

To keep your corporate passwords safe, you can’t just store them in a protected password vault and hide the key. You also need to manage role-based access provided by those passwords and keep that access up to date.

As people leave and projects change, enterprise password management software allows you to change or remove passwords in real time, particularly important for shared accounts and systems that must be kept highly secure. To mitigate risk of a data breach enterprise-level password management solutions monitor password activity and rotate passwords regularly and automatically.

Password management best practices like password creation, rotation, monitoring and removal must happen with no disruption to people’s work and no downtime for your systems. An enterprise password management solution designed to keep people productive eliminates the temptation to share passwords and skirt security controls.

Simplifying IT password management saves your IT team’s time

PAM solutions simplify IT password management. Your help desk and IT teams save time with automated account provisioning and deprovisioning, automated account discovery, automated password rotation, and consolidated reporting and auditing. IT password management can be further streamlined as your PAM solution is integrated with other critical IT systems, such as SIEM and IT ticketing systems, and diverse operating systems and platforms.

Application password management is an emerging area of concern

Privileged access management extends to non-human account credentials, such as those needed for applications and services to run. Application password management is critical because those credentials are not tied to a human. As such, they are more difficult to track and can sometimes be found in plain text in the code, applications and services where they are needed. It’s critical to store these credentials in a high-speed vault so they are managed, monitored, and removed according to your security policies.

Auditing and reporting are critical to enterprise password management

To demonstrate compliance to auditors and return on investment to executives, enterprise password security software provides detailed reporting on security practices you use to manage and protect passwords.

Enterprise password protection must also secure third-party access

Enterprise password protection goes beyond managing internal employee passwords. Contractors and partners may also need limited or temporary passwords, which you need to create, manage and remove when their lifespan is over. To keep tabs on third-party behavior in real-time you may want to require an internal employee to authorize their access or even monitor and record sessions.