Least Privilege is a cybersecurity term that describes the concept of limiting user and application access to privileged accounts through various controls and tools, without impacting productivity or requiring IT help desk support.

Least privilege is intended to prevent “over-privileged access” by users, applications, or services and help reduce the risk of exploitation should user credentials be compromised by an outside attacker or malicious insider. Thus, users are granted only enough authority for an entity to complete a specific task or job. The least privilege model can also help curtail costs and increase efficiency.

Least privilege is your best defense against third-party data breaches

Bad actors and cybercriminals focus on compromising privileged accounts associated with access by third-party vendors. Instead of just targeting one enterprise, cybercriminals are paying more attention to vendors that have multiple clients such as cloud services, and payment platforms.

Examples:

Sunburst – In the highly publicized hack known as Sunburst, nine government agencies and 100 private sector companies were breached in one of the most sophisticated and well-planned operations that involved injecting a malicious implant into the Orion Software Platform with the goal of compromising its customers. Evidence points to compromised user credentials as the entry point for nation-state cybercriminals to exploit this breach.

AMCA – In another dramatic example, American Medical Collection Agency served as a third-party provider of billing services for large healthcare companies such as Quest Diagnostics, LabCorp, and others.

A data breach at AMCA that started in August 2018 and carried through until March 30, 2019, resulted in compromising the private information of 20 million Americans, including name, date of birth, provider, and balance information.

The breach resulted in AMCA losing its largest clients, numerous class action lawsuits, and huge penalties for noncompliance with HIPAA regulations. AMCA eventually filed for bankruptcy while its clients suffered damage to their reputations as well as their bottom line.

Unfortunately, many organizations do not have a defined process or program to help manage the risks associated with giving third-party access.

Putting in place a least privilege management program aided by purpose-built least privilege software enables your organization to restrict access by third-party vendors to only what is relevant for completing their assigned tasks. The key, of course, is to manage the least privilege access control process so that productivity can be maintained while monitoring access for any unusual or suspicious activity.

IT Security tries to balance the needs of the business while at the same time securing and protecting your organization’s most valuable assets. To secure the organization, IT Security usually attempts to limit access to overprivileged users and privileged accounts. However, this can create conflict between IT Security and the rest of the employees as they attempt to complete their tasks with reduced access.

Privileged accounts exist everywhere in your IT environment. In many cases, users may not even realize the type of access they possess. They only know that when access is denied, they can’t get their work done. Hackers and cybercriminals target these privileged accounts because once compromised, they provide the ability to move across your systems and networks undetected. And all it takes is one compromised user with local administrative privileges to gain full control or steal your most sensitive information.

One of the keys to finding a balance between productivity and security lies in your choice of least privilege management software—when it’s easy to use you’re more likely to deploy all the features and craft a productivity/security balance that’s perfect for your organization.

Too many over-privileged users increase the business’s cyber risks

Organizations today typically face major challenges when implementing a least privilege policy because built-in limits on access can impact employee productivity. One thing is clear: when an employee has too many privileges you typically do not hear from them, but when privileges are limited or restricted and the employee is unable to access an account, launch an application or connect to a printer, the IT help desk will surely be the first to know.

Unhappy employees are quick to call the help desk when they are unable to perform their jobs. This usually results in the IT help desk making the user over-privileged, and while they can now perform their job it is at the increased risk of turning a simple incident into a major catastrophe. Should the over-privileged employee fall victim to a cyber attack, the attack could easily escalate to the entire organization.

What does least privilege access control do?

Least privilege access control provides the key to limiting risk within an organization. It helps build upon a Zero Trust security model and includes a risk-based security strategy.  Zero Trust is a place where most organizations should begin, and this means that all access requested by any user or system to the network, services, applications, data or systems is verified, and trust is built but continuously challenged if the trust is changed.

This requires organizations to classify users and systems into trust risks, for example, different security controls between employees, contractors, suppliers, or departments.

Cybersecurity classifications of trust and accepted risk can be dynamic. That is, you create different policies or rules across the enterprise for identities, services, applications, data, and systems.

The more access you have or request the more security controls you must satisfy before you get access.  You have the choice of trust as always, verify, or always audit, depending on how much risk you must reduce.