Privileged Access Management as a Service (PAMaaS): benefits and service offerings

Cyber Security has become one of the top priorities in today’s hyper-connected fast-growing technologies like cloud, mobile, and virtualization, making the lives of security professionals more challenging. Building multiple layers of security on the perimeter such as VPNs, access controls, firewalls, IDS, IPS, SIEMs and email gateways are no longer considered fully effective. It needs to be combined with Privileged Access Management.

Most of the cybersecurity professionals believe Privileged Access Management (PAM) is a critical initiative and a requirement to demonstrate compliance with regulations, but most of them fail to implement an appropriate level of PAM controls due to

• Complex IT environment

• A narrow focus on a point PAM solution

• Overwhelming integration needs

• Limited resources and expertise

It is not that deploying a Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution in your organization makes you risk-free. Still, it requires a solid PAM strategy to protect the organization’s assets and fast-track the process towards becoming compliant. Privileged Access Management plays a vital role while implementing Zero Trust Architecture in your organizations by enhancing the control to manage remote access.

Benefits of PAM Solution

PAM as a Service: what advantages compared to PAM on-premise?

The first advantage of PAM as a Service is its simplicity and speed of deployment as well as the time savings it provides over the long term. Most of the service is hosted at the edge of the information system (the “edge” of the SASE approach), as a cloud service, particularly for the user access portal, in order to be able to guarantee access in complete security, including in the case of external access. Then, a relay is deployed closer to resources, more deeply, to secure the end-to-end connection. The relay is automatically referenced on the centralized server. Once the relay or relays are implemented, no additional installation is required. Updates are then automatic and totally transparent for the IT department, which means that no human resources are required for tasks related to the management of the solution.

PAM as a Service also has a financial benefit: costs are staggered over time according to the actual usage, whereas PAM on-premise requires a significant initial investment, sometimes incompatible with the budget allocated for IT. The maintenance and management of updates of the solution will also be a cost vector in the on-premise model. PAM as a Service ultimately allows better predictability of costs and spreads them over time. However, PAM on-premise may sometimes be better suited to certain organizations, particularly those with large IT resources, both financial and human, if they prefer to have full control of their data, for example for regulatory compliance reasons.

PAM as a Service also provides organizations with some resilience for all external access of privileged users. Indeed, the entire targeted information system is hidden and protected behind the centralized service platform. This means that actors who need to connect from the outside can do it in complete security, whether they are internal administrators on-call or teleworking, or service providers mandated to intervene on the information system. Malicious users have no information to try to penetrate the system and attempt to steal or destroy data or parts of the information system vital to the operation of the organization.

PAMaaS Service Offerings extended by organizations

• End-to-End Accountability
• Product Licensing
• Strategic Planning and Solution Design
• Deployment and Maintenance
• Robust Governance Framework and Clear Communication
• Built-in Redundancy with High Availability and Disaster Recovery on Distributed geo-locations
• Multiple Deployment methodology – SaaS, Cloud, or On-Premises
• Highly Scalable and Extendable Design Approach for Agility
• Virtual CTO Consulting for PAM Advisory and Best Practice Recommendation
• Certified Consultants with Referenceable Credentials and Domain Expertise