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A privileged session is when a user is granted special rights or elevated permissions to access a critical resource for a predetermined amount of time, after which the access is terminated. One approach to keep an eye on how long a user has access to those vital and sensitive resources is to monitor privileged sessions.
To continue using access after a one-time privileged session expires or is revoked, the user must request access and reauthenticate. Examples of privileged activities include creating system accounts, setting up software, managing key management operations, and more.
A privileged user is an individual who typically possesses more and extra rights than ordinary users. The additional authorizing permissions give these privileged users access to vital databases, apps, and resources.
Privileged users can perform operations such as installing software, changing system settings, and others. Some examples of privileged accounts include payroll systems, services, database administrators, and more.
Privileged session management is a method for controlling the usage and accessibility of critical resources by users. When granted privileged access, users can perform elevated operations such as managing device interfaces, modifying administrative settings, or altering root files on servers. By enforcing privileged session management, administrators can monitor activity and impose an additional layer of control, including operational and time-based restrictions.
Traditional security practices often grant users full admin rights for a limited duration or manage access through shared credentials for groups. These approaches lack individual accountability and impose minimal restrictions on what users can access. This creates potential security risks, enabling users with malicious intent—or even external attackers—to exploit their access during the granted time frame. Privileged session management addresses these vulnerabilities by placing users under strict control, limiting their actions to intended operations and restricting access duration to what is necessary.
Privileged access and session management solutions provide organizations with accurate and detailed insights into the total number of users accessing mission-critical systems—including internal, external, contractual, and third-party employees. They also offer a clear view of IT systems, resources, and applications requiring elevated permissions. By centralizing the collection and management of this data, organizations can ensure comprehensive security and oversight of privileged activities.
Privileged Session Monitoring
Once users are granted elevated privileges, administrators can monitor their sessions in real time, maintaining a proactive approach to security. User activities during privileged sessions—such as downloading files, modifying system settings, and entering text or keystrokes—can be recorded. These recordings, including video playback, enable administrators to review specific sessions when needed.
If administrators identify suspicious activities during a privileged session, they can immediately intervene by terminating the session in real time. Additionally, administrators can define a list of permissible actions, such as system modifications or file downloads. If a user deviates from these predefined activities, the system can trigger alerts or automatically pause, lock, or terminate the session to mitigate potential threats.
Management of Recorded Sessions
Most access management solutions include features that enable administrators to control user access during privileged sessions. These tools empower organizations to enforce their security policies effectively. Recording privileged session data for audits is essential, as it provides a reliable source of evidence for future investigations and compliance.
Recorded session data can also be integrated with third-party analytics solutions for further processing. A robust privileged session management solution should support essential business requirements such as reporting, auditing, maintaining cyber insurance, and ensuring regulatory compliance. By leveraging these capabilities, organizations can strengthen their security posture and minimize risks associated with privileged access.
Privileged session management aims to protect an organization’s overall cybersecurity by monitoring and controlling the privileged activities of users. Essentially, its primary goals are
Restricting Access Scope for Risk Mitigation
Privileged user access is managed, tracked, and safeguarded overall through privileged session management. The frequency of attacks is significantly reduced when a session has privileges but not the user, as opposed to a system with numerous privileged accounts. Using privileged access control to restrict access scope at the session level is a perfect way to address all of these.
Maintaining Session Oversight
A real-time monitoring system is required for critical supervisioning of privileged activities. This reduces anomalous behavior and quickly identifies and resolves it.
Real-Time Monitoring
IT teams can use real-time monitoring and warning systems to quickly detect and manage any threats. Identifying and mitigating data breaches can also be accomplished by external suppliers and staff tracking privileged remote access consistently.
Incident Response
A privileged session management system is required in the event of a data breach so that unauthorized or suspicious activity may be promptly addressed. It lessens the possible impact of risks by assisting in the prompt detection and resolution of malicious activities carried out on high-stake systems and applications.
Session Recording
Session recording provides detailed insights into the tasks performed during a session. Organized session data can be securely stored for future reference and used to meet compliance standards as required.
Creating an Audit Trail of Usage
Maintaining detailed usage logs is essential for demonstrating security and compliance. This is particularly important in industries such as healthcare, education, and government, where regulatory requirements demand meticulous records.
Audit Reviews and Activity Logging
Regularly reviewing privileged sessions enables administrators to gain a comprehensive understanding of user behavior and quickly identify anomalies or security risks. Activity logging ensures that every action performed by authorized users is meticulously tracked and documented.
Compliance Reporting
Compliance reporting demonstrates that an organization adheres to the laws and regulations applicable to its operations, such as HIPAA, SOX, and PCI. A robust audit trail simplifies the process of generating these reports and verifying compliance.
Forensic Analysis
Logged activities serve as a valuable resource for security investigations in the event of a breach or other disruptions. These audits allow investigators to efficiently identify the individuals involved and uncover the methods used, streamlining the investigative process.
Automated Workflows
Streamlining daily tasks and mitigating human errors can be achieved when all the activities of users are logged and audited. With a session management tool, it is not just the time saved, but it’s very accurate in terms of detecting and flagging suspicious activities and sending out timely alerts.
Resource Allocation
The highest level of productivity is achieved when resources assigned to each user are properly allocated based on their specific needs. By managing privileged sessions effectively, organizations can ensure optimal resource utilization, ultimately enhancing overall performance.
Performance Metrics
Monitoring key performance indicators such as the client feedback, sales figures, and production efficiency are a great way to gain valuable insights and make informed choices about the growth of business. Access management solutions help organizations in driving this data-driven approach.
User Accountability
Privileged session management helps in limiting the misuse of privileged access by supervising, managing, tracking, and recording privileged sessions for user accounts. It makes it possible that all the user actions are traceable, and simplifies the identification of user responsibilities, and the time at which an activity is performed.
Simplification of Policy Enforcement:
By centralizing session controls, organizations can uniformly apply and manage policies across all users and systems. This reduces the complexity of policy adoption and ensures consistent implementation.
With data breaches rising by almost a 100% in 2024 compared to 2023, the risk of attackers gaining access to an organization’s internal and sensitive systems has significantly increased. So, securing privileged access is of paramount importance, and here are some essential security parameters to secure privileged access:
Enforce Least Privilege and Role-based Access Control (RBAC): Restrict users' unwanted access and retain only the minimum privileges. Grant temporary or just-in-time access for users to complete the required jobs. When RBAC is implemented, users will get only the privileges associated with their roles and nothing more, thereby preventing unauthorized access.
Password policies: Organisations can create specific password policies for teams and departments, and let the passwords of privileged accounts match the uniquely created password policies.
Multi-factor authentication: Letting users authenticate via two or more authentication methods creates additional layer of security. This strengthens the security and prevents delving into the secured protection.
Session management: Administrators should monitor the privileged sessions launched by the users and have a complete and detailed audit of the user’s activities. Also, real-time monitoring of the privileged sessions can be performed to avoid the execution of malicious activities by users.
Audit logs and reviews: Businesses can keep a complete record of privileged activities, which can include creating an account, accessing it, deleting it, launching a connection via the account, creating another user, changing passwords, and more. With custom reports generated for a particular period, administrators have a comprehensive understanding of the activities.
Privileged Access Management (PAM) is a broader concept of access management encompassing identity, user, access, and session management. So, ideally, Privileged Session Management (PSM) is a subset of PAM.
As the cornerstone of access management, PAM (Privileged Access Management) oversees user identities, accounts, credentials, and individual access to critical resources. It enforces key security principles such as the principle of least privilege, role-based access control, and access control policies. PAM enables organizations to define with precision who has access to what resources and when. Additionally, administrators can leverage PAM’s reporting capabilities to gain comprehensive insights into every activity carried out within the organization.
Privileged Session Management (PSM) focuses primarily on monitoring and recording privileged sessions. When users launch remote connections to target devices and sensitive internal systems, the user’s privileged access needs stringent monitoring, and they shouldn’t be provided with the ability to do more than what they’re required to do. Administrators can shadow the privileged sessions completely and can choose to pause or terminate the session whenever suspicious or malicious activity is carried out in the remote privileged session.
A proper privileged session management tool helps businesses mitigate insider threats and external data threats by continuously monitoring the privileged activities of users. Some of the key business benefits of using a PSM tool include:
While buying a privileged session management solution, the must-have features that a business must consider include
Managing accounts and passwords
Any session management tool should include the ability to control the privileged accounts and credentials used in an organization.
Automatic discovery
Additionally, the solution should regularly be able to track down newly added resources, user information, and privileged accounts.
Multi-factor authentication
It should allow users to access the privileged credentials using various authentication levels and techniques.
Role-based access control
Just-in-time access policies and role-based access control enforcement are critical minor privilege enforcement doctrine tenets.
Recording and playback of sessions
It should be able to record sessions launched using privileged credentials and save the recordings later for playback.
Secure remote access provisioning
It should enable users to launch remote connections securely through privileged resources.
Comprehensive audit trails and logging capability
A detailed, comprehensive audit logging capability is necessary for future usage.
Cyberattacks that start with account compromise continue to escalate and gather steam. Just 16% of cloud-based attacks were reported in 2020; by 2024, that number had risen to 55%. Enforcing stringent least-privilege policies and keeping an eye on identities are critical to solving issues.
We can monitor, record, and identify suspicious activity immediately when privileged sessions are launched remotely—only with the use of a privileged session management tool. Numerous access management tools are available to identify user behavior in the cloud; however, only privileged session management can provide real-time monitoring.
The main goal of privileged session recording is to capture each user's entire privileged session. After it is recorded, it can be used for forensic audit purposes. Administrators can monitor and detect any potentially harmful activity using the recorded sessions.
Privileged session monitoring is when administrators/managers invigilate live sessions by keeping track of them as users establish connections. Any active session can be monitored by administrators, who can also follow the user's activities throughout the session. The session may be paused for a while to detect the activity or ended if any dubious behaviour occurs. If the user need assistance, the administrators can work together by joining the session. When contractors or other third-party providers require the administrative permissions necessary to carry out specified tasks, real-time session monitoring is most useful.
With the Securden Unified PAM, you can manage, control, and gain access to all privileged accounts, users, and resources from one single, centralized console. It enables you to record user and third-party business vendor-privileged sessions. You can maintain a comprehensive audit trail of recorded sessions and real-time monitoring capabilities that enable IT administrators to intervene and terminate sessions if any suspicious activity is detected.
