Wednesday's car ride prompts a Classic Rock play list on the iPod and what do you know... Bill Wither's "Use Me" spawns yet another blog courtesy of the line "Cause I sure am using you to do the things you do." Without privilege identity management, your users will be used to do the things you don't want them (or anyone) to do.
Specifically there are two scenarios that come to mind:
- If your desktop users have admin rights then they are susceptible to be "used" by malware to wreak havoc.
- If you've granted root credentials to server, virtual or cloud admins then they can "loan" them out to be used by someone else not necessarily authorized to do so.