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Nov
23

Monitoring Privileged Activities, a Crucial Aspect of Data Center Infrastructure Management

From: The Optrics Insider

Data centers represent the nerve center of IT enterprises. With the presence of a complex mix of databases, network devices, applications and physical and virtual systems, the modern day data center present a unique challenge for IT operations. With cyber-crime looming large, data center operations are required to not only be robust and efficient, but also highly secure to ensure business continuity and data integrity.

Though  the IT infrastructure in data centers face both external and internal  security threats, of late, internal threats seem to be far more alarming  as many of the reported security incidents have been caused by  malicious insiders. Disgruntled staff, greedy techies, tech-savvy contractors and sacked employees could act with malicious intent and misuse privileged access.

Incidentally, the privileged accounts that grant virtually unlimited access and full controls to the physical and virtual IT resources are all pervasive in the data centers.  As uncontrolled administrative access is a potential security threat, properly managing the privileged accounts and monitoring the privileged actions is imperative.

Consolidating,  securing, controlling, managing and monitoring privileged accounts and  access have become integral aspects of Data center Infrastructure  Management (DCIM). Keeping an eye on the actions carried out by the users during privileged sessions on critical IT resources is absolutely essential both as protective and detective security controls against cyber-attacks.

In  a single, unified solution, Password Manager Pro delivers both  privileged identity management and session management. It helps enterprises consolidate all the privileged accounts and centrally control them in fully automated fashion, thereby putting an end to the convoluted manual password management practices. Password Manager Pro helps establish access controls across data centers taking care of the access management requirements of DCIM.

Privileged sessions launched from Password Manager Pro can be completely video recorded, archived and played back to support forensic audits. By  monitoring all actions performed by privileged accounts during  privileged sessions, enterprises can gain complete visibility and  counter threats to information security that arise from outside as well  as inside the corporate firewall.

In  addition, compliance regulations such as PCI-DSS, SOX, HIPAA and others  mandate proper internal controls to be in place and privileged sessions  be  fully monitored with a view to protect sensitive data from internal  abuse. With selective sharing, role-based access controls, approval  workflows, policy enforcing mechanism, real-time alerts, audit trails  and first-in-class remote login and session recording capabilities,  Password Manager Pro helps enterprises answer the ‘who’, ‘what’ and ‘when’  of privileged access.

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