Guardian of business secrets: privileged user

Hacking privileged accounts is a dream of cybercriminals, as these accounts provide access to sensitive information critical to your business operations. Therefore, password protection deserves special attention.

Not only private individuals make the mistake of neglecting their passwords that protect their most important data. In many companies, neither management nor employees take care of strong passwords. The most common weak passwords include “12345” or even more unimaginative “password”. Hackers need to face a greater challenge than this!

Who is a privileged user?

A privileged user is someone who has access to critical systems. A privileged user has more permissions than a regular user.

Typical users of privileged accounts are system administrators responsible for managing an entire IT environment and IT administrators who perform tasks related to operating specific software or hardware.

A privileged user has high IT privileges:

Privileged accounts in the corporate environment

Since privileged accounts are used by system administrators to run or maintain an IT system, almost every organization that owns a server, database, or application is involved in managing such access. Furthermore, privileged access extends beyond the traditional IT infrastructure management of an organization, encompassing social media, Google, WordPress, or any other shared password-protected application managed by employees. An organization may have twice or three times as many privileged accounts as it has employees.

Types of privileged accounts in the corporate environment:

The risks of hacking privileged accounts

Two typical risks can be mentioned in the case of privileged accounts:

The above factors pose a serious vulnerability for any organization.

PassMan – Enterprise Password Manager

If you store your company passwords on notes, Excel spreadsheets, or in Keepass software that doesn’t manage permissions, it’s time to switch to a simple, secure, and well-controlled system!

The PassMan Password Manager securely stores your passwords in an encrypted, centralized vault and only provides access to users with the appropriate permissions. Everyone can only access the data they need for their job. The activities of users – who logged into the system, when they did so, and what passwords they requested – are fully traceable, with fast access to information provided through reports and activity logs. The system also takes care of password generation and rotation depending on the settings.

Try PassMan for free!