Achieving Security at the Service Desk Without Impacting Productivity

Those of us in the security industry are no strangers to the “security paradox” or “productivity versus security”. The primary purpose of an IT service desk is to provide a single point of contact for users to gain assistance in troubleshooting, get answers to questions and solve problems.

The reality is there is a constant struggle in most organizations between IT security and productivity of the business, and in this case the IT service desk.

You’ve probably heard this many times before, but passwords are often the weakest link in the security chain.

Imagine that your web server infrastructure was a fortress that you spent lots of time and resources fortifying. You built high walls, watch towers, retracting bridges, moats, solid iron bars across the windows and so on to keep the bad guys out.

Now imagine that the bad guys happen to have a copy of the key to the front door! I use this analogy to make a serious point: what good is the most locked down web server in the world if the bad guys can exploit weak or shared passwords to bypass all of the external security measures you’ve put in place?

With the release of Bomgar Remote Support 18.2, securing the keys to your fortress are available with the new Bomgar Vault. This allows the service desk to securely store, share and track the use of privileged credentials by the IT service desk.

Bomgar Vault for Remote Support is an on-appliance credential store that enables your technicians to access privileged credentials and inject them directly into an endpoint. Vault is integrated directly with the Remote Support solution so your technicians don’t have to learn to use another tool or even exit Bomgar to retrieve passwords. With just one click of the Key icon, right in the Bomgar Console, users simply select the correct credential from the drop-down list to log into the remote system, without ever having to know or see the actual passwords.

With Bomgar Remote Support and Bomgar Vault, you can:

1. Improve productivity and time to resolution by streamlining access to shared passwords – no more sticky notes!
2. Eliminate the need to store and track shared credentials manually
3. Mask plain text credentials and password from technicians so they cannot be phished or stolen
4. Eliminate a very common and profitable attack pathway for hackers
5. Greatly reduce your exposure to Pass the Hash and other password vulnerabilities by using the Bomgar Vault to rotate the AD passwords at an automatic rotation upon password check-in.
6. Use the built-in Discovery tool to automatically find and protect AD and local credentials.

Want to know more? Start a free 30-day trial in /login to experience the benefits of Vault in your environment.

For a quick overview of the new Bomgar Vault, check out this 90-second video!

Eugene Zhang, Sr. Solutions Engineer