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Providing the appropriate level of privilege


Geoff Haggart, President, BeyondTrust International, identifies the 3 misuses of privilege.


Identity and access management is typically looked at from the AAA perspective: Access, Authentication and Authorisation. • Access solutions answer the question "can I come in?"


• Authentication solutions answer the question "are you who you claim to be?"


• Authorisation solutions answer the question "what privileges do I have when I'm in?"


However, neither of these perspectives sufficiently address the question of "how can I protect against good people from doing bad things?" Put another way, even when you have authorised someone onto the network, you can’t rely on everyone being competent or a saint all of the time. Good people do, do bad things – in one of three fundamental ways of misusing privileges given to them – whether that be the ubiquitous ‘admin rights’ on Windows OS desktops, or root password access in Linux/Unix server environments. Intentional harm is the most visible and usually


“


results in significant cost to your corporation. This "insider attack" is the result of an administrator intentionally deleting or stealing data, planting some malware.


Accidental harm is the most common but is usually not measured in direct impact to your corporation. This is the result of someone attempting to do a


specific action (i.e. install or upgrade software, go to a specific website, use a system task) and either miss- keys a step or doesn't follow the directions and a problem occurs that requires the Help Desk to step in and fix the mistake. Indirect harm is the most esoteric but in reality another potential for significant cost to your corporation. This is when some malware hijacks an administrator's credentials and causes damage while impersonating that administrator. So, what is the solution? The solution is something known as least privilege, which should not be confused with restricted privilege.


Applying the principle of least privilege across the enterprise is not a difficult undertaking. It starts with an understanding that any user with admin rights (Administrator or Protected Administrator) to their Windows Desktop or Root access to Unix, Linux or virtualised servers has effectively omnipotent privileges to do whatever they want, whenever they want to do it.


By contrast, users


How can I protect against good people from doing bad things?


simple functions like adding a printer which can destroy productivity. However, once you've identified who is "over privileged" and who is "under privileged", it is a simply a matter of establishing the appropriate "least privilege" environment, which any good Privileged Identity Management solution will do.


” See BeyondTrust on Stand H95


who are setup as Standard User or Guest effectively have limited authority and often need to engage the help desk or a manager to type in the admin password for


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