What is privileged remote access?

Privileged remote access ensures smooth IT operations and the quick remediation of issues with critical resources. It is extremely important to the long-term success of your organization. In today’s distributed computing and WFH world, you must have secure privileged remote access for your admin, IT staff, third-party contractors and other service providers that support the backend.

Every threat actor’s goal is to find and exploit a weakness in privileged access or privileged credentials. With more and more admins working remotely and an increasing number of critical resources moving to the cloud, the threat is rapidly growing. How can you ensure that all your remote access, especially for privileged remote users, is safe, efficient and easy to use?

Regardless of where your admins or third-party IT partners log in from, their access is protected, monitored and recorded. They can perform all the same admin functions as if they were on site and maintain the security and operational efficiency of their privileged role.

With no client software to install, your privileged users can log on from anywhere in the world to access all the admin resources they need to ensure your organization is productive and secure. This also accelerates adding new admin users as with group permissions, they can get immediate access to all necessary resources to start contributing right away.

Privileged users can get straight to work safely and securely – without the need for a VPN – when privileged remote access is monitored and protected by next-generation PAM solutions. Additional security measures are applied to privileged remote access via behavior analytics that collect user baseline characteristics and behaviors to ensure the user is who (or what for machine users) they say they are.

When connected via our cloud platform, Starling, admins can approve or deny any request anywhere without being on a VPN. Cloud-based privileged remote access and user management delivers efficiency and security to your organization. Designated approvers can have immediate access to the approval workflow, which not only accelerates the granting of admin permissions but also lessens the impact on productivity. You can be sure all approvers are contacted, and all required steps are followed to ensure compliance and accountability.

Privileged remote access connects off-site admins, external machine users and third-party service providers who need elevated permissions to use and manage critical digital resources. Admins can complete their tasks – often focused on supporting, maintaining and fixing enterprise infrastructure. – from anywhere.

With the rise of remote working, the increasing reliance on contractors and the migration of critical services and infrastructure to the cloud, the ability to provide safe and efficient access to network administrators, developers, DBAs and other IT support staff is a significant element of the secure operations of most organizations. Additionally, smooth PAM workflows such as those for credential request, secure password storage and session monitoring differentiate privileged remote access from classic remote desktop solutions.

There is risk when allowing any external user, endpoint or IT resource to connect to your critical systems. The stakes are dramatically increased when these users/resources have elevated permissions to access critical backend systems. If there is a cybersecurity gap in how the connection is performed or how (and what) access rights are granted, a bad actor can wreak havoc and do tremendous damage to your systems. The main challenge with privileged remote access is how to secure these connections without impacting productivity or hampering the success of your external team members and your organization.