Privileged Account Discovery

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"We are very pleased to see Paramount Defenses, a valued Microsoft partner, offer an innovative security solution (in Gold Finger) that helps enhance security and compliance in Active Directory environments."

Charles Coates, Senior Product Manager
Identity and Security Business Group

Privileged Account Discovery

Privileged access is the new holy grail for perpetrators today, because privileged accounts are the "Crown Jewels" of cyber security since they hold the proverbial "Keys to the Kingdom."

Consequently, Privileged Access Management (PAM) has become a top corporate and cyber security priority globally.

The primary objective of Privileged Access Management is to have organizations accurately identify and then subsequently adequately protect all privileged users in their environment.

Privileged Account Discovery is thus the very first step that organizations need to perform in their PAM implementation journey, because one cannot protect what one cannot identify.

When it comes to Privileged Account Discovery, precision is key and paramount, because there's zero room for error.

Our solutions uniquely enable organizations to perform precise privileged account discovery in their Active Directory.

Active Directory - The Home of Privileged Accounts

From the all-powerful Domain Admins to all delegated admins and from all computer accounts to all non-local service accounts, the majority of all privileged access resides in Active Directory.

In fact, considering that all of an organization's domain user and computer accounts, passwords, security groups and policies reside in Active Directory, for their protection, an ocean of default and delegated privileged access exists in AD.

To perform Privileged Account Discovery in Active Directory, which is the first step in implementing Privileged Access Management, it is essential to accurately discover not just members of default AD privileged groups, but all privileged accounts, including all such accounts to whom any level of privileged access has been delegated in Active Directory.

Privileged Account Discovery in AD

In a Microsoft Windows Server based IT infrastructure, the entirety of an organization's domain user accounts, domain computer accounts and domain security groups, are stored, secured and managed in Active Directory.

To enable and facilitate their efficient management and security, most organizations delegate varying levels of privileged access on thousands of accounts, groups and OU in Active Directory, to various IT teams and IT personnel.

The accounts of all users that have been delegated any level of privileged access in Active Directory are also privileged in nature, and often, the level of privileged access they possess could be almost as much as that possessed by Domain Admins.

Privileged Access Management cannot be implemented until a comprehensive and accurate discovery of all accounts that possess any kind of privileged access in Active Directory, and not just those that possess Domain-admin equivalent privileges, has been completed.

Thus, even just the very first step of PAM, i.e. precise Privileged Account Discovery requires organizations to accurately identify all privileged access in their foundational Active Directory.

Effective Permissions - The Keys to Privileged Access

From AdminSDHolder to Domain Admins, and from the default Administrators account to the CEO's domain user account, literally everything in Active Directory is an AD object.

Every AD object is protected by an access control list (ACL) that specifies who has what security permissions on the object, and it is the net cumulative resulting set of "effective permissions" that determines who actually has what access on the object.

Thus, what provides accurate insight into privileged access is not an audit of Who has what permissions in Active Directory but an audit of Who has what effective permissions in Active Directory.

As a result, to accurately perform privileged account discovery in Active Directory, organizations need to be able to accurately audit effective permissions in their Active Directory.

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Our Unique Solution

Our unique Microsoft-endorsed Active Directory Privileged Account Discovery solution fully automates comprehensive and accurate discovery of privileged accounts in Active Directory.

It is the world's only Privileged Account Discovery solution that can accurately discover both, default privileged access and all provisioned/delegated privileged access in Active Directory.

It uniquely empowers organizations worldwide to be able to complete the first step of Privileged Access Management.

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Here's a quick overview of how our unique Active Directory Assessment Tools help perform Privileged Account Discovery in Active Directory –