Financial services cybersecurity professionals fight daily battles to meet regulatory compliance and boost defenses without bogging down user experience. And every direction they turn, privileged access management (PAM) appears to save the day. This is especially true for the highly regulated financial industry.
PAM in financial services
Whether it’s compliance related, security related or simply a means of proving ROI to board members, PAM is an essential tool for the financial industry. After all, the data being protected by banks, insurance companies and investment firms is one the most sought-after data sets in the cybercriminal world.
This makes the credentials to financial services institutions especially valuable and especially prone to attack. One compromised password to a highly privileged executive could lead to financial ruin for hundreds or thousands of customers and could lead to massive regulatory fines.
Managing access to those privileged accounts in the first place is easier and more cost effective in the first place than the messy, expensive cleanup of a breach.
How One Identity Safeguard measures up in the financial world
Cybersecurity professionals in finance know this, and have turned to One Identity Safeguard as the PAM tool that carries the solution to their privileged access problems:
Advanced operational efficiency
“Safeguard is one of the best security products we’ve seen,” says this customer regarding the operational efficiency Safeguard has afforded their company. "The low-cost functionality has streamlined processes “with the end-user in mind” for a better user experience that leads to fewer problematic, risk-inducing user workarounds."
This becomes particularly important when dealing with onboarding processes.
“Whoever forgets their password can reset it on their own rather than reaching out to the security desk. Whenever we have a new employee, we found that it was taking at least two days to get them a username or access to the system. Now, once they are logged into the organization and are registered on our ERP system, their complete access will be ready within five seconds.”
The reduction of the IT workload afforded by Safeguard inevitably lowers operational cost, empowering financial institutions to focus on growth and digital transformation. One customer notes, “It’s very scalable. It doesn’t matter what size of organization you have. If you have an organization of 1,000 or 100,000, the product is going to be scalable to your needs.”
Stronger privilege visibility and security
Safeguard provides not just compliance-ready session monitoring and audit trails but also enables rapid forensic investigation capabilities in the event of a detected breach.
One customer, a risk management VP, notes, “We are able to log and get reporting on all privileged activity that is being performed. We like the fact that we can leverage the session recording feature, which is especially valuable when we’re dealing with third-party vendors that have to remote into our boxes and servers to do any work on behalf of the bank.”
Customers are also aware that threat protection is not only for external hackers but for inside threats. The customer also notes careful privilege monitoring, saying, “Prior to this Safeguard implementation, we did not know when somebody was using their elevated privileges to do certain features or functions. We only hoped that it was according to whomever the change request was associated.”
Crossing their fingers and trusting the honor system is a thing of the past now that Safeguard has provided such accessible, centralized visibility. “We can play back all the sessions to make sure no type of unattended usage of the privilege or elevated credentials were being used. From securing the bank standpoint, it has helped tremendously.”
By securing machine identities along with human ones, Safeguard allowed for this customer to govern and secure all endpoints that might lead to a potential breach. “We use the solution’s Approval Anywhere feature which enables us to add an extra layer of security for critical passwords without adding time-consuming approval processes.”
Measurable ROI
The real question is, of course: Is it worth it?
Safeguard might scale to your institution’s growth, reduce breach exposure, lower administrative overhead and provide high-quality support and expertise, but does it truly offer a strong return on investment?
Customers in the financial sector believe so. In fact, they strongly believe so.
Since financial institutions are so keenly aware of the value of the data they protect, any responsible stakeholder wants proof of ROI in order to get the best security they can.
“Being in information security, anytime you can sit down with the board of directors and say, ‘We now have a more secure bank,’ there is ROI,” says one bank VP whose institution trusts Safeguard for their PAM needs. “The reason: The biggest threat to any bank is an insider threat. Now, with our privileged access, we have them logged, recorded and locked up in a password vault so we know who’s making changes, when they’re making change and why they’re making changes. This helps greatly improve the security posture of the bank.”
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