In the world of privileged account security, we tend to get stuck in the tall grass of technology. As a result, we sometimes miss the entire point of the exercise.
Every organization has undergone an exercise to write security policies that employees, contractors and systems need to adhere to. These policies serve a purpose, often to secure the enterprise and meet best practices set for them by industry compliance regulations.
Policy is the language of controls. But how does that policy get enforced and who is monitoring that policy? Where does that written policy get lost in the translation?
With this week’s announcement of CyberArk’s Master Policy in version 8, we have put policy front and center in the discussion of privileged account security. Master Policy offers a faster, simplified way to implement the critical privileged account security controls.
It provides a single, unified interface for managing and monitoring policy in the language of business – not just for one department, but for the whole enterprise. With Master Policy, written policy does not get lost in the translation to technical settings and security, risk and audit teams can easily see and understand if policy is carried out correctly in the technology.
Ultimately, enforcement of policy is what mitigates cyber-attacks, both from the outside and from within. Turning policy into technical controls can be difficult. For example, some companies have policies dictating that privileged account passwords need to be changed every 90 days, except for Unix servers, which need to be changed every 30 days. While this policy is easy to understand from an auditor perspective, it can be difficult to implement on a global basis from a technical stand point.
That’s the goal of today’s release – translating the natural language of policy into technical controls and enforcement across the global enterprise.
Taking a Policy First approach to privileged account security will make your organization more secure from insider and external threats, and to help you meet your audit and compliance objectives.
CyberArk is proud to once again advance the state-of-the-art of privileged account security.
