The Cyberark Privileged Access Security Solution
The Cyberark Privileged Access Security Solution
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Table of Contents
The Privileged Access — a Real, Pervasive, Threat..................................................................................................3
Privileged Credentials – The Keys to the IT Kingdom..............................................................................3
Are You Underestimating Your Level of Risk?............................................................................................4
Compliance, to be or not to be......................................................................................................................4
Who Are Your Privileged Users?....................................................................................................................4
Policy First: Aligning Risk Management with Business Objectives........................................................5
The CyberArk Shared Technology Platform..............................................................................................................5
Master Policy™—Simplified, Unified, and Unequaled to set Policy First.............................................. 6
Digital Vault™...............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................6
Discovery Engine............................................................................................................................................. 6
Secure Audit .................................................................................................................................................... 6
Enterprise Class Integration......................................................................................................................... 6
Scalable, Flexible, Low-Impact Architecture..............................................................................................7
CyberArk Products..........................................................................................................................................................7
Core Privileged Access Security .................................................................................................................................7
Credential Protection and Management ....................................................................................................7
Session Isolation and Monitoring................................................................................................................ 8
Privileged Analytics and Threat Detection ............................................................................................... 8
Alero™: Remote Vendor Access..................................................................................................................... 8
Least Privilege Management ....................................................................................................................... 9
Domain Controller Protection...................................................................................................................... 9
Application, Container and DevOps Secrets Management................................................................................... 9
Application Access Manager™ ...................................................................................................................... 9
Endpoint Privilege Management and Credential Theft Protection ..................................................................10
Endpoint Privilege Manager........................................................................................................................10
About CyberArk.............................................................................................................................................................10
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Privileged accounts, and the access they provide, represent the largest security vulnerabilities an organization faces today. Why are attackers
inside and outside the enterprise zeroing in on privileged accounts?
• Privileged accounts are everywhere, in every networked device, database, application, and server on-premises, in cloud and ICS
environments, and through the DevOps pipeline
• Privileged accounts used by both human and non-human/machine users have all-powerful access to confidential data and systems
• Privileged accounts have shared administrative access making their users anonymous
• Privileged accounts grant too broad access rights, far beyond what is needed for the user to perform their job function
• Privileged accounts go unmonitored and unreported and therefore unsecured
Simply put, privileged accounts allow anyone who gains possession of them to control organization resources, disable security systems, and
access vast amounts of sensitive data. All predictions point to privileged account abuse worsening in the future unless organizations take action
now. Best practices dictate that privileged accounts should be incorporated into an organization’s core security strategy. Privileged accounts are
a security problem and need singular controls put in place to protect, monitor, detect, alert and respond to all privileged activity.
Most organizations today rely on a combination of privileged credentials such as passwords, API keys, certificates, tokens, and SSH keys to
authenticate users and systems to privileged accounts. When left unsecured, attackers can compromise these valuable secrets and credentials to
gain possession of privileged accounts and use them to advance attacks against organizations. In fact, cyber security research shows that the one
thing every attacker needs to be successful is access to a privileged account. Notably, as some organizations have started protecting privileged
passwords, attackers have shifted their attack methods to SSH keys, which are often overlooked when organizations secure privileged accounts.
To prevent targeted attacks, protect the keys to the IT kingdom and keep sensitive data away from attackers, organizations must adopt a
privileged access security strategy that includes proactive protection and monitoring of all privileged secrets and credentials.
To mitigate the risk of a serious breach, enterprises need to adopt a security solution that specifically addresses their privileged access exposure.
CyberArk’s Privileged Access Security Solution provides the comprehensive protection, monitoring, detection, alerting, and reporting required
to stay one step ahead of the attackers and safeguard an organizations most critical assets.
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Additionally, DevOps security has not yet reached the maturity levels of traditional enterprise IT. Half of respondents do not have a privileged
security strategy for cloud or DevOps and that nearly 40% store privileged account passwords and secrets in simple text files representing
unmanaged, unsecured high value accounts which create a highly risky environment. When you factor in all of this risk associated with the typical
enterprise around the [lack of] privilege access security and then face the reality that over 80% of security breeches that have taken place in
the last 8 years have involved privileged accounts as part of their success, it becomes very clear where IT security professionals need to have a
focused plan of attack.
Compliance, to be or not to be
As the risk of advanced threats increases, compliance regulations like PCI DSS, Sarbanes Oxley, NIST, NERC-CIP, HIPAA, GDPR, and
frameworks such as the SWIFT CSCF, have increased their requirements to control, manage and monitor privileged access.
Organizations that do not fully understand their privileged environment face the prospect of audit failure resulting in steep fines and penalties
and more importantly, still leave themselves vulnerable to a serious breach without a privilege access security strategy.
Remote vendors. Privileged access is granted to perform a job function allowing contractors to work under a cloak of anonymity.
Once inside, remote vendors have unrestricted access similar to any “standard” privileged user, and can elevate privileges to access
sensitive data throughout the organization.
Hypervisor or cloud server managers. Business processes, such as finance, HR, and procurement, are moving to cloud applications,
exposing enterprise assets to a high risk from the broad access granted to cloud administrators.
Systems administrators. For almost every device in an IT environment (every endpoint and server), there is a shared privileged
account with elevated privileges and unfettered access to its operating systems, networks, servers, and databases.
Application or database administrators. Application and database administrators are granted broad access to administer the
systems to which they are assigned. This access allows them to also connect with virtually any other database or application found
in the enterprise.
Select business users. Senior-level executives and IT personnel often have privileged access into business applications that hold
sensitive data. In the hands of the wrong person, these credentials provide access to corporate financial data, intellectual property,
and other sensitive data.
Endusers. Far too many company’s *still* allow their endusers to run with local admin access to do things like install software and
setup a printer. In the hands of the wrong person, these privileged credentials provide the first place for incoming attackers to
persist as they begin their journey toward corporate financial data, intellectual property, and other sensitive data.
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Social media. Privileged access is granted to administer the corporate internal and external social networks. Employees and
contractors are granted privileged access to write to those social media accounts. Misuse of these credentials can lead to a public
takeover causing harm for an organization’s brand or an executive’s reputation.
Applications. Applications use privileged accounts to communicate with other applications, scripts, databases, web services and
more. These accounts are often overlooked and pose significant risk, as their credentials are often hard-coded and static. A hacker
can use these attack points to escalate privileged access throughout the organization.
DevOps. DevOps pipelines enable organizations to achieve high levels of agility by automatically building and deploying services
and applications. To access data and other applications and services, these services require secrets and other credentials which
must be secured. Additionally, a typical DevOps pipeline is supported by several powerful tools, each of which is managed by an
admin console which is accessed using privileged credentials which must also be protected.
At the core of the infrastructure are an isolated vault server, a unified policy engine, a discovery engine and layers of security that provide
scalability, reliability and unmatched security for privileged access. A flexible architecture can start small and expand to the largest and most
demanding enterprise deployments.
Only CyberArk provides solutions that help protect, manage and audit user and application credentials, provide least privilege access, control
applications on endpoints and servers, and secure, monitor, and analyze all privileged activity – actively alerting on anomalous behavior. This
complete enterprise-ready solution is designed to protect, monitor, detect and respond is tamper-resistant, scalable and built for complex
distributed environments to provide the utmost security from insider and advanced threats.
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Master Policy maps written security policy to technical settings and manages this policy in natural language. Privileged access security controls
can now be implemented in a matter of minutes, raising the bar on a process that without Master Policy may take days or even weeks. Master
Policy enables fast implementation and flexibility to set an enterprise global policy while providing controlled, granular level exceptions to meet
the unique operational needs of operating systems, regions, departments or lines of business.
Digital Vault™
The award-winning, patented Digital Vault ™ is an isolated and bastion hardened server with FIPS 140-2 encryption that only responds to the
vault protocols. To ensure integrity, all CyberArk products interact directly with the vault and share data to allow all product modules and
components to communicate securely and benefit from the secure storage of passwords, SSH keys, policy settings and audit logs–that exist
within on-premises, hybrid and cloud environments. There is no single point of failure.
• Segregation of Duties and Strong Access Control. The vault administrator does not have access to the credentials stored in the vault,
which ensure proper segregation of duties. The solution supports multiple authentication methods to ensure security and control over all
privileged credential access and activity.
• Layers of Security. The seven layers of built-in security for authentication, access control, encryption, tamper-resistant storage, and data
protection with no backdoor or DBA access provides exceptional security.
• High Availability and Disaster Recovery. The infrastructure is architected for high-availability and has built-in fail-safe measures to meet
and exceed disaster recovery requirements, including secure backup and simple recovery.
Discovery Engine
Designed to continually discover changes to your IT environment be it in the cloud or on-premises, the discovery engine enables constant
up-to-date protection and helps ensure that all privileged activity is accounted for and secure. As new servers and workstations are added or
removed, changes in privileged accounts are automatically discovered.
Secure Audit
CyberArk’s Privileged Access Security Solution provides automated enforcement of privileged account policies enabling continuous monitoring to
deliver adherence to audit requirements. IT Audit teams have complete visibility into the “who, when and why”, but also exactly “what” took place
during all privileged sessions. The solution provides simplified, cost-effective audit reporting through a single, centralized repository of all audit data.
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• Help Desk. Integrates with most enterprise ticketing systems as well as in-house solutions. Capabilities include service request validation,
new service request creation, and integration with approvals workflows such as manager approval (dual control) and timed availability.
• DevOps. Integrates with the DevOps toolchain secures and manages secrets used by CI/CD tools such as Ansible, Chef, Jenkins and
Puppet and container orchestration software such as Docker.
CyberArk Products
Every product in the CyberArk Privileged Access Security Solution is stand-alone and can be managed independently while still sharing
resources and data from the common infrastructure.
Each product solves a different requirement for privileged access security and all are designed to work together to provide a complete, secure
solution for operating systems, endpoints, servers, databases, applications, hypervisors, network devices, security appliances, and more, for on-
premises, cloud and ICS environments, and through the DevOps pipeline.
The CyberArk solution prevents the malicious use of privileged user passwords and SSH keys, and brings order and protection to vulnerable
accounts. It secures privileged credentials based on your privileged access security policy and controls who can access which credentials and
when. This automated process reduces the time-consuming and error-prone task of manually tracking and updating privileged credentials to
easily meet audit and compliance standards.
• G uard against unauthorized users accessing privileged account credentials and ensure authorized users have the necessary access for
legitimate business purposes.
• Update and synchronize privileged passwords and SSH keys at regular intervals or on-demand, based on policy.
• Discover and protect privileged credentials used in on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments, as well as throughout the DevOps
pipeline and on loosely connected endpoints off-network.
• Enable users to automate and simplify privileged account management tasks via REST APIs such as account workflow, onboarding rules,
permissions granting, and more.
• Provide security and audit teams with a clear view of which individual users accessed which privileged or shared accounts, when and why.
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The CyberArk solution secures, isolates, controls, and monitors privileged user access and activities to critical Unix, Linux, and Windows-based
systems, databases, virtual machines, network devices, mainframes, websites, SaaS, and more. It provides a single-access control point, helps prevent
malware from jumping to a target system through the isolation of end users, and records every keystroke and mouse click for continuous monitoring.
DVR-like recordings provide a complete picture of a session with search, locate, and alert capabilities on sensitive events without having to
filter through logs. Real-time monitoring helps provide continuous protection for privileged access as well as automatic suspension and termination
of privileged sessions if any activity is deemed suspicious. The solution also provides full integration with third-party SIEM solutions with alerts on
unusual activity.
• Isolates privileged sessions to prevent the spread of malware from a user’s endpoint to a critical system.
• Helps protect privileged passwords and SSH keys from advanced attack techniques such as key-stroke logging and pass-the-hash attacks.
• S ecures and controls privileged sessions to guard against malware or zero-day exploit from bypassing controls.
• Creates an indexed, tamper-resistant record of privileged sessions and provides searchable metadata.
• Offers command line control and native SSH access while still providing secure access to privileged users using either passwords or SSH keys.
• Provides AD Bridge capabilities that enable organizations to centrally manage Unix users and accounts that are linked to AD through the
CyberArk platform.
CyberArk provides a security intelligence solution that allows organizations to detect, alert, and respond to anomalous privileged activity
indicating an in-progress attack. The solution collects a targeted set of data from multiple sources, including the CyberArk Digital Vault, SIEM,
and the network. Then, the solution applies a complex combination of statistical and deterministic algorithms, enabling organizations to detect
indications of compromise early in the attack lifecycle by identifying malicious privileged activity.
• Detects and alerts in real-time with automatic response to detected incidents.
• Identifies privileged access related anomalies and malicious activities with the ability to detect in-progress attacks.
• A dapts threat detection to a changing risk environment with self-learning algorithms.
• Correlates incidents and assigns threat levels.
• Enhances the value of existing SIEM solutions with out-of-the-box integrations.
• Improves auditing processes with informative data on user patterns and activities.
CyberArk® Alero™ is a SaaS solution that combines Zero Trust access, biometric multi-factor authentication and just-in-time provisioning. Alero
ensures that remote vendors only access what they need to by fully integrating with the CyberArk Core Privileged Access Security Solution
for full audit, recording and remediation capabilities. Alero is designed to provide fast, easy and secure privileged access to remote vendors who
need access to critical internal systems.
By not requiring VPNs, agents or passwords Alero removes operational overheard for administrators and makes organizations more secure.
• Integrates with CyberArk Core PAS to provide additional layer of security for critical systems
• Introduces a more secure solution than traditional token-based or VPN approaches
• Removes operational overhead associated with managing VPNs, agents and passwords
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CyberArk allows privileged users to use administrative commands from their native Unix/Linux session while eliminating unneeded root access or
admin rights. This secure and enterprise ready sudo-like solution provides unified and correlated logging of all super-user activity linking it to a
personal username while providing the freedom needed to perform job functions. Granular access control is given while continuously monitoring
all administrative commands super users run based on their role and task. The solution also enables organizations to block and contain attacks on
Windows servers to reduce the risk of information being stolen or encrypted and held for ransom.
• Replaces commonly used sudo solutions with a centralized alternative that provides granular privilege controls and secure storage of audit logs.
• Provides proof to auditors of secured, managed, and controlled super-user privileges.
• Provides a detailed audit trail of which individual elevated privileges to root, when and for what reason.
• L imits super-user privileges to only those that are necessary to reduce the risk of exposure to abuse or error.
• Authorizes access to fully delegated root shells for users to work intuitively according to their workflow.
• Out-of-the-box policy templates enable segregation of duties on Windows Servers by controlling administrator privileges based on user role.
• Enables commands to be whitelisted/blacklisted on a per-user and/or per-system basis.
CyberArk offers an ultra-light weight Windows agent that performs network behavior analytics to detect in-progress Kerberos attacks. The
solution both monitors and protects domain controllers, safeguarding against impersonation and unauthorized access. It helps protect against a
variety of common Kerberos attack techniques.
• Detects a range of potential threats including suspected credential theft, lateral movement, and privilege escalation.
• Provides real-time alerts via CyberArk dashboard, email or SIEM dashboard.
• Provides the ability to enforce granular controls for least privilege and application control on the domain controllers.
• Detects a variety of in-progress Kerberos attacks including Golden Ticket, Overpass-the-Hash, and
Privilege Attribute Certificate (PAC) manipulation.
CyberArk Application Access Manager is designed to provide comprehensive privileged access, credential, and secrets management for widely
used application types and non-human identities. For example, Application Access Manager secures credentials for commercial off-the-shelf
applications, traditional internally developed applications, and scripts, as well as containerized applications built using DevOps methodologies.
Application Access Manager is designed to provide a strong security solution that enables organizations to control, manage, and audit all non-
human privileged access for various application types, across on-premises, hybrid, containerized and multi cloud environments.
• Establishes strong authentication by leveraging the native attributes of applications, containers, and other non-human identities to
eliminate the “secret zero bootstrapping” challenge and potential vulnerability.
• Simplifies integrations by supporting validated integrations with a wide range of commercial software platforms, applications and tools, such
as business applications, security tools, RPA platforms, CI/CD toolsets, and container platforms.
• Accelerates deployment and usage by providing developers with an easy-to-use solution to secure secrets in application and DevOps
environments – allowing them to focus on developing software. Additionally, the open source solutions make it easy for developers and
DevOps admins to evaluate, deploy, and secure their DevOps environments.
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• Ensures a comprehensive audit on any access by tracking all access and providing tamper-resistant audit.
• Consistently applies access policies by applying role-based access controls on non-human identities, leveraging integrations with other
CyberArk and partner solutions to centralize policy management across the enterprise, and other policy-based controls.
• Ensures business continuity and other enterprise requirements including scalability, availability, redundancy and resiliency, alerting, policy-
based rotation, and other enterprise requirements.
Endpoint Privilege Manager secures privileges on the endpoint (Windows and Mac desktops/laptops) and contains attacks early in their lifecycle.
It enables revocation of local administrator rights, while minimizing impact on user productivity, by seamlessly elevating privileges for authorized
applications or tasks. Application control, with automatic policy creation, allows organizations to prevent malicious applications from executing,
and runs unknown applications in a restricted mode. This, combined with credential theft protection, helps to prevent malware from gaining a
foothold, and contains attacks on the endpoint.
• Enables organizations to remove administrator rights from everyday business users without halting productivity, and seamlessly elevates
privileges based on policy when needed to run authorized applications or commands.
• G uards against malicious applications including ransomware from entering and propagating throughout the environment, and enables users
to run unknown applications in a “Restricted Mode,” helping users stay productive and safe.
• Helps an organization detect and block attempted theft of Windows credentials and those stored by popular web browsers thus preventing
propagation through the environment.
• Completely integrated to CyberArk Application Risk Analysis service to enable automated analysis and timely policy decisions for unknown
applications.
• Seamless integration with Check Point, FireEye and Palo Alto Networks threat detection solutions.
• S upport for on premise server and SaaS deployment options.
About CyberArk
CyberArk is the global leader in privileged access security, a critical layer of IT security to protect data, infrastructure and assets across the
enterprise, in the cloud and throughout the DevOps pipeline. CyberArk delivers the industry’s most complete solution to reduce risk created by
privileged credentials and secrets. The company is trusted by the world’s leading organizations, including more than 50 percent of the Fortune
100, to protect against external attackers and malicious insiders. A global company, CyberArk is headquartered in Petach Tikva, Israel, with U.S.
headquarters located in Newton, Mass. The company also has offices throughout the Americas, EMEA, Asia Pacific and Japan.
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