How Often Should You Review Privileged Access?

Depending on the size of your organization, its needs, industry regulations and security risks, how often you review privileged access can vary. However, a best practice for most organizations is to review privileged access quarterly to maintain a strong security posture. 

Continue reading to learn more about the importance of reviewing privileged access regularly, best practices and how KeeperPAM streamlines privileged access reviews.

The importance of reviewing privileged access regularly

It’s critical to review privileged access regularly because it mitigates security risks by ensuring that only authorized individuals have access to necessary resources, preventing privilege creep from happening. Failing to review privileged access regularly can lead to significant risks, including data breaches, insider threats and non-compliance penalties. Without ongoing oversight, outdated or excessive privileges may remain in place, increasing the likelihood of unauthorized access and misuse of sensitive data. 

Best practices for reviewing privileged access

When reviewing privileged access, organizations should implement the following best practices to ensure comprehensive security and maintain compliance.

Implement regular access review cycles

Conducting privileged access reviews at least once a quarter is crucial to identifying and addressing any over-privileged accounts. Regular reviews help close security gaps and reduce the risk of unauthorized access or insider threats. Along with this, organizations should conduct a comprehensive access review at least once a year. This ensures compliance with industry standards, mitigates the risk of privilege creep and strengthens the protection of sensitive data. 

Real-time monitoring and logging

While periodic access reviews are important for maintaining long-term security, privileged account misuse can occur at any time, making real-time monitoring and logging crucial. By recording and tracking user activities, organizations can detect suspicious behavior, unauthorized access and privacy violations immediately, allowing them to mitigate risks before significant damage is done. The audit trails generated by logs are essential, as they provide organizations with a detailed record of all privileged access and account activities. This not only holds users accountable for their actions but also ensures ongoing compliance. 

Implement Just-in-Time (JIT) access and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

It’s important to implement Just-in-Time (JIT) access to ensure that elevated privileges are granted only when needed and for a limited time, especially for highly privileged roles like a system administrator. By granting access only when required for a set time frame, organizations can minimize the risk of unnecessary access to sensitive systems. Although JIT doesn’t completely eliminate the need for periodic reviews, it reduces the frequency and urgency for full-access reviews.

Privileged access should also be assigned based on a user’s role within the organization, also known as Role-Based Access Control (RBAC). RBAC ensures that users are granted only the necessary privileges to perform their tasks. This approach not only minimizes the risk of over-privileged accounts but also simplifies the review and management of privileged access. Rather than auditing permissions for each individual user, organizations can evaluate access at the role level. 

Review access after major changes

Privileged access should always be reviewed whenever a major change happens in the organization, such as when an employee leaves, changes roles or when system updates or mergers take place. These events often result in shifts in access needs, and failing to update access rights can leave unnecessary permissions in place. Setting a policy to immediately review privileged access after significant changes is important to prevent the risk of leaving unnecessary or outdated permissions in place. 

How KeeperPAM® streamlines privileged access reviews

A Privileged Access Management (PAM) solution like KeeperPAM simplifies the privileged access review process by providing a centralized dashboard, supporting granular access control, enabling session management and automating compliance and audit reports.  

Provides a centralized dashboard for access visibility

KeeperPAM provides a centralized dashboard that offers organizations clear visibility into who has access to sensitive systems and resources. This unified view makes it easier for administrators to identify over-privileged accounts and unnecessary access that could pose security risks. With this visibility, administrators can swiftly take action to revoke or adjust privileges, ensuring that only authorized users have the appropriate access. 

Supports granular access controls

KeeperPAM supports both RBAC and JIT access, enabling organizations to implement granular access controls that align with their security policies. With JIT, users are granted time-limited access to privileged accounts only when necessary to perform a task. Once the task is completed, access is revoked immediately to minimize security risks. With KeeperPAM, organizations can enforce RBAC and assign access based on a user’s role within the organization. The combination of these two approaches optimizes access management and significantly reduces the potential for privileged account misuse. 

Enables session management, monitoring and recording

Another core function of KeeperPAM is privileged session management, which allows admins to monitor, record and control privileged sessions in real time. KeeperPAM captures every action performed by a privileged user, from screen recordings to keyboard interactions, providing an additional layer of visibility and accountability. These sessions can be recorded for review, compliance or security purposes, and events can be logged to any SIEM, ensuring the proper use of privileges and minimizing the risk of insider threats. 

Automates compliance and audit reporting

KeeperPAM reduces the complexity of meeting compliance standards like FedRAMP, SOC 2, ISO 27001 and HIPAA by automatically generating detailed audit logs and compliance reports. These reports provide a comprehensive record of privileged access activities, ensuring that all privileged access reviews are fully documented and demonstrating adherence to standards. By automating compliance reports, organizations can streamline the auditing process, minimize manual effort and ensure timely and accurate reporting for audits. 

Streamline privileged access reviews with KeeperPAM

Periodic privileged access reviews and following best practices are necessary for strengthening an organization’s security infrastructure. However, these regular processes become much easier with the right PAM solution in place.

KeeperPAM offers the ideal solution with its unified, user-friendly platform. With key features like JIT access, RBAC, advanced monitoring and auditing capabilities, KeeperPAM simplifies the secure management and control of privileged accounts, providing peace of mind for your organization. 
Request a demo of KeeperPAM today to streamline privileged access reviews and maintain a strong security posture for your organization.