How to Ensure Privileged Account Password Security?

With the business world getting its share of the benefits and challenges of the digital transformation, the sensitivity of public institutions, international companies and SMEs to provide access security has also increased. For these organizations, building a seamless IT infrastructure system in terms of data security is the key to maintaining business continuity. The best way to create an IT network with a strong data and access security is through the proper protection of corporate data stacks.

With this goal in mind, the protection of privileged account passwords comes to the fore. All passwords of users in your IT infrastructure need to be unique and complex, making it possible to securely store and protect the passwords of privileged accounts. In addition, while trying to attain data security in their IT networks, organizations should prevent users from using the same password in more than one place and use a management system that will allow them to remember and document all passwords.

You need to take advantage of an advanced cybersecurity solution to protect your organization from cyber attacks via emails or ransomware attacks that bring your system to a standstill due to the hijacking of privileged account passwords.

Why Does Password Security of Privileged Accounts Matter?

Password security of privileged accounts is one of the first steps for organizations to protect their IT infrastructure against different cybersecurity threats. Unprotected and easy passwords can easily be intercepted by a cyber attacker to create a data breach. As a matter of fact, one of the latest studies addressed the commonness and simplicity of easy passwords. According to the research, the password "123456", which can be captured in less than a second, is used by 103,170,552 users worldwide. Again, the password “123456789” is decrypted in less than a second and 46,027,530 people use this password.

One of the main ways to prevent data breaches is for organizations to protect the privileged account credentials and passwords they have in their IT infrastructures. Hackers can use various methods to get hold of critical data stacks belonging to your organization. Not having a cybersecurity policy to deal with these methods may expose you to the following risks:

• Privileged Account Credential Theft: A cyber attacker who accesses an important account of an employee within the system can capture different types of personal and corporate data, even addresses and social security numbers, by stealing privileged account credentials. A cyber attack with the aim of stealing privileged account credentials can cause disarray and problems that take a long time to fix, such as the seizure of government and public confidential information in public institutions, the leaking of certain financial and operational information in private companies, or impersonating people to apply for a loan with the compromised personal information of employees or customers.
• Account Takeover: This cyber threat, which means the capture of privileged accounts for organizations, takes control of e-mail addresses and social media accounts. By using these channels and acting as if they were you, hackers can create phishing attacks directed at your business stakeholders and create many issues ranging from economic problems to disruption of the business continuity.
• Data Breach: Ensuring the password security of privileged accounts is one of the key points in preventing data breaches. By storing users' passwords in secure vaults isolated from the system, you can prevent data breaches and make your IT infrastructure more secure. By storing passwords securely, you can reduce the chance of cyber attacks such as brute force attacks from harming your organization.
• Financial Loss: The seizure of passwords in your organization's IT infrastructure may expose you to financial losses.

By learning how to properly protect the passwords of privileged accounts, you can significantly reduce the risks described above and preserve the confidentiality of your corporate presence in the digital world.

How to Ensure Password Security at A Corporate Level?

To ensure corporate level password security, you first need to review the questionable cybersecurity approaches that may cause you to encounter data breaches. Reviewing these approaches will make it easier for you to successfully establish password security. Then, you can create a password management strategy that includes the following items and take a strong step towards ensuring your organization's password security.

• The password solution you integrate into your IT infrastructure must have features such as session management, session monitoring and remote access.
• It is extremely important that the password management solution you use can offer appropriate role-based access. When authorizing multiple individuals and groups, everyone must have access to the credentials and passwords.
• The password solution you select for your organization must have appropriate reporting and verification tools. This will enable you to track when and by whom passwords are used and increases your control over your IT infrastructure.
• Finally, in your organization, you must have a corporate password management solution that includes a privileged session management component. Privileged session management, which stands out as the most functional way to secure a large number of passwords, is directly related to password management and security policies. The privileged session management component, which is also suitable for zero-trust and least privilege methods, enables password managers not only to access resources directly, but also to manage all accounts with access to sensitive data and critical infrastructures in a controlled manner.

Privileged Account Passwords are Safe with Single Connect

Password management, which is a part of the Privileged Access Management process, is very important to ensure end-to-end data and access security. Our Privileged Access Management (PAM) suite, Single Connect, excels at protecting the passwords of privileged accounts.

Single Connect, with its Password Vault solution, protects the passwords of privileged accounts in your organization's IT infrastructure and prevents password sharing that may cause breaches.

Single Connect's Password Vault solution stores all passwords in fully encrypted form in a secure and central safe called a password vault. The Password Vault, which creates unique passwords for your target servers and users with privileged access, also automates the randomization of passwords.

This is how the Password Vault works:

• The user logs in to the Single Connect Password Vault interface with their username and password and selects the target host server they want to connect to.
• The Password Vault issues the target computer's one-time password (OTP) to the user. This password is valid for a limited time (for example, an hour). During access, Single Connect ensures that all exit activity is logged.
• The user logs in directly to the target server with the password they just received.

When the password expires, the Password Vault connects to the target host, changes the password and terminates user activity.

Password Vault, which allows you to create strong passwords, keeps these passwords in secure safes isolated from the system. Password Vault, which can also activate one or two administrator approval systems for encrypted exit processes, allows you to reserve a password for future use with its password reservation feature. Password Vault, which changes the password after each use, also has the split password feature. Thanks to this feature, the passwords of critical systems are divided into parts and connection authorization is given with the participation of all users.

Single Connect, one of the world's leading and comprehensive PAM solutions, with a 100% recommendation rate and a score of 4.9 out of 5 by our customers, is included in the Gartner® Peer Insights™ 'Voice of the Customer': Privileged Access Management report, and helps increase the data and access security of companies and minimizes the damage that can be caused by cyber attacks.

Contact us to start protecting your passwords with the Single Connect Password Vault solution, which prevents the capture of account information and data by the different types cyber attack mentioned in this article, and to get detailed information about the Password Vault.