Keeping an organization’s data accessible yet secure is challenging, but not impossible— especially with efficient credential management.
According to statistics, 61% of malicious attacks and security breaches are caused due to compromised credentials. If you want to keep your organization’s credentials safe and free from exploitation, you need to take measures to ensure proper credential management.
Organizations can enhance their security and protect their credentials by connecting with a Managed Service Provider (MSP) that professionally conducts credential management.
What Do Credential Management Systems Do?
Credential management is part of an organization’s Identity, Credential, and Access Management (ICAM) model. Identity management identifies the subject and establishes their identity, access management grants permissions for what a user can do and see in a system, and credential management focuses on binding this identity to an authenticator so the user can be safely identified.
Credential management systems regulate the administration of the issuance, modification, and revocation of credentials across an organization. By protecting credentials and establishing policies as well as privileges, credential management systems work as gatekeepers to ensure your data is kept secure.
These management systems are part of the public key infrastructure (PKI). The PKI is a combination of policies and procedures that create and manage both public-key encryption as well as digital certificates. The PKI is essentially a binding agreement between entities and public keys, and the role of the credential management system is to enforce these agreements.
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In most cases, the zero-trust model is followed and entities—such as staff members—are only given the necessary privileges and credentials to fulfill their respective jobs.
What Are Credentials?
Issuing and managing staff member credentials is integral for running any data-focused organization. Staff members utilize credentials such as usernames and passwords to access vital tools so they can carry out the tasks they were hired for.
As integral as user credentials are to the smooth operation of businesses and services their mismanagement can result in significant security risks for your business — this is where credential management can help.
What Challenges Are Addressed by Credential Management Systems?
Credentials are essential to managing access to sensitive databases, however, if used incorrectly or if placed in the wrong hands they hold serious potential for abuse.
Credential management systems aim to combat the following challenges:
- Granting privileges based on the user agent’s specific role
- Revoking credentials on the termination of a role
- Accessing management across multiple platforms
- Managing the issuance, modification, and revocation of credentials or credential life cycle management
- Enforcing security policies
By using the right credential management system, organizations can ensure the above challenges are addressed appropriately. However, only a professional or trained technician should handle credential management systems as misuse can lead to system critical malfunctions.
To avoid such drawbacks, organizations should ensure only professionals —such as a experienced MSP— are handling their management systems.
Credit: Keith Kasaija
Credential Management Software Options
Over the last few years, enterprise organizations saw a 27.4% increase in security breaches.
Implementing credential management best practices reduces the risk of compromised credentials leading to a data breach while ensuring data is still user accessible. Best practices such as following the zero-trust model, using smart cards, and restricting privileges as well as session lengths can go a long way in ensuring your data security.
One of the best practices that organizations should follow is ensuring they use a trusted credential management API.
Let’s take a look at some of the top credential management solutions that are currently used by organizations.
Dashline Business
Dashline Business is a credential management software that uses cloud-based system access for user convenience as well as credential encryption. Organizations who opt for this software enjoy data security through an encrypted password vault as well as a strong password generator.
LastPass Enterprise
LastPass Enterprise offers credential encryption keys as well as multi-factor authentication to maximize security. This credential management software offers a password management distribution system and single sign-on account structure to reduce the risk of credentials falling into the hands of bad actors.
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Passportal
Passportal is yet another popular cloud-based credential management system. This software not only offers a robust password generator and the ability to create temporary accounts, but it also offers active directory integration alongside LDAP.
Passportal has both onsite and cloud-based system access for security and ease of access.
Enhancing Your Organizations Security Through Effective Credential Management
If you want to prevent security breaches and unwelcome shared credentials, you need to ensure robust credential management. Business data is prone to a variety of vulnerabilities, and to prevent the exploitation of credentials your system needs to be thoroughly secured.
Using advanced credential management systems and ensuring your system is run and handled by professionals will reduce the risk of exploitation from bad actors and keep your organization running smoothly.
Get Professional Help with Credential Management at Intellicomp Today
There are several measures you can take to ensure security across your organization — credential management is just one of them.
At Intellicomp, we offer IT MSP services for businesses across the United States and can help you enhance your cybersecurity through various means, including the use of robust credential management systems.
Get in touch with us today to learn more about our remote IT services and how we can help you enhance your IT infrastructure.
Featured Image Credit: Damir Kopsezhanov
