Skip to main content

Privilege creep


Privilege creep is the gradual accumulation of access rights beyond what an individual needs to do his or her job. In information technology, a privilege is an identified right that a particular end user has to a particular system resource, such as a file folder or virtual machine.

Privilege creep often occurs when an employee changes job responsibilities within the organization and is granted new privileges. While an employee may need to retain his or her former privileges during a period of transition, those privileges are rarely revoked and result in an unnecessary accumulation of access privileges.

Privilege creep, which is a common problem in IT organizations of all sizes, creates a two-fold security risk. First, an employee with excess privileges may be tempted to use those privileges inappropriately. Second, if an intruder gains access to an end user's account -- and that end user has excess privileges -- the intruder will also have excess privileges. Either scenario poses a risk that could result in data loss or theft.

The security risks caused by privilege misalignment is so great that the FBI and Department of Homeland Security have issued a public service announcement, warning that an increase in insider threats from disgruntled and/or former employees can be traced to privilege creep and authorized access to sensitive information and the networks. According to research by Intermedia and Osterman Research, 89% of employees leave their jobs with a valid login and password to at least one business application belonging to their former employers, and 49% admitted to logging in to an account after leaving the company.

Privilege creep can be minimized by enforcing the principle of least privilege (PoLP) and limiting permissions to the minimal level an employee needs to perform his or her job. Privilege creep can also be minimized by conducting periodic access rights reviews. This is a process in which system owners and managers confirm each employee's need to access specific roles and rights in an effort to discover and revoke excess privileges. An identity and access management system can facilitate a review by providing administrators with the ability to instantly view and change access rights.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Black swan

A  black swan event  is an incident that occurs randomly and unexpectedly and has wide-spread ramifications. The event is usually followed with reflection and a flawed rationalization that it was inevitable. The phrase illustrates the frailty of inductive reasoning and the danger of making sweeping generalizations from limited observations. The term came from the idea that if a man saw a thousand swans and they were all white, he might logically conclude that all swans are white. The flaw in his logic is that even when the premises are true, the conclusion can still be false. In other words, just because the man has never seen a black swan, it does not mean they do not exist. As Dutch explorers discovered in 1697, black swans are simply outliers -- rare birds, unknown to Europeans until Willem de Vlamingh and his crew visited Australia. Statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb uses the phrase black swan as a metaphor for how humans deal with unpredictable events in his 2007...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)

A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a computer chip that performs rapid mathematical calculations, primarily for the purpose of rendering images. A GPU may be found integrated with a central processing unit (CPU) on the same circuit, on a graphics card or in the motherboard of a personal computer or server. In the early days of computing, the CPU performed these calculations. As more graphics-intensive applications such as AutoCAD were developed; however, their demands put strain on the CPU and degraded performance. GPUs came about as a way to offload those tasks from CPUs, freeing up their processing power. NVIDIA, AMD, Intel and ARM are some of the major players in the GPU market. GPU vs. CPU A graphics processing unit is able to render images more quickly than a central processing unit because of its parallel processing architecture, which allows it to perform multiple calculations at the same time. A single CPU does not have this capability, although multi...
Post a Comment
Read more

6G (sixth-generation wireless)

6G (sixth-generation wireless) is the successor to 5G cellular technology. 6G networks will be able to use higher frequencies than 5G networks and provide substantially higher capacity and much lower latency. One of the goals of the 6G Internet will be to support one micro-second latency communications, representing 1,000 times faster -- or 1/1000th the latency -- than one millisecond throughput. The 6G technology market is expected to facilitate large improvements in the areas of imaging, presence technology and location awareness. Working in conjunction with AI, the computational infrastructure of 6G will be able to autonomously determine the best location for computing to occur; this includes decisions about data storage, processing and sharing.  Advantages of 6G over 5G 6G is expected to support 1 terabyte per second (Tbps) speeds. This level of capacity and latency will be unprecedented and wi...
Post a Comment
Read more