Organizational security often begins with password management. Even the most basic of organizations use passwords to protect email accounts and document management solutions, while larger organizations may need to worry about HIPAA compliance, protecting industrial control systems, and more. Ensuring security with robust password management policies is key, and utilizing enterprise password management software, such as the WALLIX Bastion Password Manager, significantly simplifies this daunting task.
Privileges users and Password Management Challenges
Privileged users have complete access to all systems and data within your organization. They have the ability to change backend systems – making them highly valuable accounts for hackers. Strong passwords enforced by robust password management policies help protect these crucial accounts from being utilized incorrectly. Organizations must consider:
- Are passwords complex enough?
- Are everyone’s passwords complex enough?
- How can you be sure that a local account hasn’t been created in a hurry with a weak password?
- Are your passwords resistant over time?
- Are your passwords required to be changed on a regular basis?
- Is there anything that keeps someone from using the same password for multiple resources?
If you answered “no” to any of these questions – then your organization could be at risk of a breach. The best solution is to implement enterprise password management software to ensure password best practices are followed and your organization remains secure.
Why you need Enterprise Password Management Software
Enterprise password management software helps protect your organization from breaches by:
Simplifying the implementation and enforcement of Password Best Practices
Using a password manager solution simplifies the implementation and enforcement of password and security best practices by making them essential requirements when setting up accounts. By enforcing these rules from the beginning, organizations can be sure that their most critical systems and data don’t have any unwanted visitors. Using a password manager, security teams can enforce rules like:
- Strong passwords: Easily enforce strong password use by requiring specific capitalization, number, and symbol combinations. Plus, sophisticated encryption ensures that created passwords are protected.
- No root access: Sophisticated encryption methods ensure that not even privileged users have access to root passwords, which eliminates many of the risks associated with password management and limits how easily stolen credentials can be used.
- Automatic rotation: Forcing users to change their passwords on a regular basis helps protect organizations from threats and helps ensure that old or forgotten privileged accounts can be used to gain access to systems.
- Access control: In the 21st century, employees, third-party contractors, and all users need to have access to systems and passwords from wherever they may be working. A password manager enforces access control by supporting global teams while allowing security to maintain control over who has access to everything.
Only a robust password manager provides the proper level of password protection and ensures that password policies are applied on every single resource of an IT infrastructure.
Making it easy to reach compliance
A password manager helps organizations reach compliance for a variety of regulations like:
- SWIFT → “Ensure passwords are sufficiently resistant”
- PCI-DSS → “Requires a minimum password length (etc.)”
- NIS à “OESs are encouraged to maintain awareness by conducting regular cybersecurity assessments”
- HIPAA → “The Security Rule requires covered entities to perform risk analysis as part of their security management processes”
- GDPR → “Supervisory authorities are expected to apply security best practices and lay out codes of conduct”
The WALLIX Bastion Password Manager
The WALLIX Password Manager within the Bastion suite enables super administrators to regain control over access governance by managing password complexity and ensuring that passwords are not divulged or hijacked.
Secure your organization using robust enterprise password management software.
New features
The Bastion 6.0 includes new Password Manager features to support a Global Credentials Management philosophy:
- The rotation of SSH keys to support a native approach to security management
- Centralized identification management with check-in/check-out capabilities
- New plugins for credential rotation (MySQL, Juniper, ERX, Fortigate, Palo Alto)
- Up-to-date security for CHACHA20/ECC
- The support and generation of SSH certificates
- Application-to-Application Password Management (AAPM) module so servers can automatically store and extract passwords from the vault
Advanced Capabilities
All of the new capabilities support the advanced tools and features of previous versions of the WALLIX Password Manager:
- Password vault: Secure passwords and SSH keys in an encrypted vault (Algorithm AES 256) and use open architecture to integrate with other vaults.
- Advanced management: Schedule password and SSH rotation and revocation with a high level of granularity and custom workflows.
- Interoperability: The manager includes a complete library of plugins to support market standards.
Benefits of Password Manager
Utilizing enterprise password management software like the WALLIX Password Manager helps organizations:
- Meet compliance: Easily meet and stay up to date with enforcement rules for the main compliance standards.
- Reduce risk: Optimize security and reduce your organization’s overall risk exposure by maintaining complete control over all privileged accounts.
- Get real-time alerts: Get alerts in real-time to ensure your organization is protected from attacks and utilize alert data to review incidents post-mortem.
- Install easily: The WALLIX Bastion can be quickly deployed into existing security environments and can help optimize the total cost of ownership (TCO).
The Password Manager to Support Robust Security
The WALLIX Password Manager is a component of the WALLIX Bastion Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution which includes advanced session management and access management tools. The entire suite of applications helps organizations improve and ensure security against all types of threats by maintaining complete control and visibility into all privileged user activity. To learn more about the WALLIX Password Manager or the complete Bastion solution, contact us.
