Hardcoded credentials and lack of credential security in DevOps systems are huge vulnerabilities for organizations. Malicious insiders with access to credentials in the clear can establish and expand their foothold infrastructure in IT, posing a significant risk of data theft.
What is PAM
Privileged Access Management (PAM) refers to a set of IT security management principles that help organizations isolate and manage privileged access, manage privileged accounts and credentials, control who can gain administrative access levels to which endpoints, and monitor users for that access The action to perform.
How Privileged Access Management (PAM) Works
Privileged access management is the process of delegating selected users with elevated access (also known as privileged access) to business-critical resources, accounts, and credentials that are critical to their job functions. For task-specific access, after the task is completed, the access provided to the user is revoked.
In other words, with privileged access, a privileged user can access privileged accounts, credentials, systems, servers, databases, etc. to perform important tasks, including managing and modifying those accounts and resources. Privileged access management is the process of governing and managing this access.
While providing privileged access is important to allow employees to perform critical job functions, it also involves high-risk exposure. Compromised privileged users or accounts can be costly as privileged users can access multiple key credentials and resources.
Therefore, privileged access management also involves continuous monitoring of privileged users to ensure that they are not abusing their access rights. This requires regularly reviewing assigned permissions and revoking redundant permissions when a user's role in the organization changes.
Securing DevOps with PAM Tools
- Incorporate Privileged Access Security into Kubernetes Orchestration Workflows
- Ensure CI/CD runs worry-free and uninterrupted
- Authenticate to RPA routines using Intuitive Password Access Automation
- Automation Anywhere integration
- Cortex XSOAR integration
Incorporate Privileged Access Security into Kubernetes Orchestration Workflows
PAM360 integrates with Kubernetes to discover and protect secrets distributed across multiple clusters. In order to automate privileged tasks, applications and services in a Kubernetes environment must connect to endpoints inside and outside the Kubernetes server. This connection is usually authenticated using a secret, which contains a username, password, and machine identity (in Base64-encoded key-value pairs) in these endpoints.
PAM360 facilitates effective management of secrets through seamless integration with Kubernetes, enabling you to:
- Discover namespaces, keys, and JSON files containing keys (key-value pairs) and add them to PAM360, storing them as resources and accounts respectively.
- Map key-value pairs to corresponding privileged accounts of target endpoints, such as databases, operating systems, network devices, etc.
- Manage and rotate secrets for K360 clusters by initiating remote or local password resets via PAM8 for target endpoints.
Ensure CI/CD runs worry-free and uninterrupted
PAM360 provides plugins for various CI/CD platforms to help organizations restore security in their DevOps environments. These plugins eliminate the need to embed in script files, enabling processes and applications to obtain credentials from PAM360's vault without human intervention. PAM360 also allows IT administrators to define access control and approval policies for DevOps systems, ensuring that no more permissions are granted than required.
PAM360 plugins are currently available for the following CI/CD platforms:
- Ansible
- Chef
- Puppet
- Jenkins
Continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) platforms are automation tools that help organizations automate configuration management through pipelines to run routine tasks without human oversight. Performing these tasks often requires sensitive information such as privileged passwords, API keys, and access tokens to interact with other systems, applications, and services in the environment. In most DevOps environments, such credentials are stored in clear text in script files for smooth task execution, but this can lead to many security issues.
To mitigate such risks, PAM360 helps eliminate embedded credentials in DevOps pipelines by providing integration capabilities with various CI/CD tools. This integration ensures that every time a task is executed, the required credentials are securely retrieved from PAM360's vault instead of being stored in clear text in the script file.
Authenticate to RPA routines using Intuitive Password Access Automation
PAM360 provides out-of-the-box integration with Automation Anywhere and Cortex XSOAR to manage their sensitive identities such as passwords, keys, certificates, etc. With this integration, RPA teams can automate the regular acquisition and rotation of sensitive credentials needed by bots to perform routine privileged tasks without any manual intervention. Additionally, RPA teams can leverage PAM360's advanced access control workflows, depending on the availability required.
Automation Anywhere integration
PAM360 integrates with Automation Anywhere, and if your organization requires a secure bot-operated remote login setup, you can associate PAM360's bot with any bot (specifically used to initiate remote connections) to securely obtain from PAM360's password vault necessary credentials and initiate a remote connection.
- Securely capture passwords stored in the PAM360 Password Vault to use them to connect to remote machines, applications or databases.
- Rotate passwords regularly to ensure compliance with policy and uninterrupted bot routines.
Cortex XSOAR integration
PAM360 integration with Cortex XSOAR:
- Configure instances in Cortex XSOAR by automatically fetching credentials stored in PAM360's vault.
- Perform password-related operations on the Cortex XSOAR instance, such as resetting passwords and getting resource and account details.
PAM360 provides powerful privileged access management (PAM) capabilities, enabling enterprises to obtain strong security support under the ever-increasing security risks. It can ensure that all privileged access tasks targeting key assets can perform centralized management, constraint control, and retrospective evidence collection .