Protecting Privileged Passwords: a “Past the Password” Perspective

Like Peter Parker’s uncle Ben once said, “with great power comes great responsibility.” And in the world of IT, there is no greater power than being in charge of privileged accounts that have authority over services, servers and entire environments, as well as access to data, applications and systems. So, what’s the appropriate amount of responsibility needed? To start, the passwords themselves, of course, need to be kept securely and only known to as few people as is possible. But is that it? For many of you, it may be all you do. But it’s important to look past just thinking about the password itself and look at the how you manage the usage of that password. Knowing that only a few of you have, say, the Administrator’s account password is a great comfort, but how often are the others in this elite group logging in and using that account, and what are they doing when they log in? It’s likely that you have little or no idea – and that’s not good. And how often do the passwords used even change? For your Administrator-type accounts, sure it’s every 30 days, but I’ll bet that you haven’t changed a service account password with full access to your SQL servers in… well, never. Sound about right? So, who has access to that password? If you’re like most organizations, you can’t even remember the answer. With external threats and spear phishing both on the rise (and both targeting your privileged accounts), as well as internal threats of data theft and fraud equally putting your company at risk, it becomes more critical that your view of how to protect privileged passwords go far beyond just keeping track of what the password is, but who has it, who uses it, and what it’s used for. In this webinar, I’ll be discussing the realities of today’s state of security using some of the most recent (and respected) reports in the industry, and look at what steps you should be taking to properly protect your privileged passwords in a way that even Uncle Ben Parker would be proud of. Register Now | Wednesday, July 8, 2015 | 1pm EST / 10am PST Author/Presenter: Nick Cavalancia, Industry Expert and Founder of Techvangelism