Cloud Access Management

Securing access to the cloud

Most organisations are moving towards the cloud for better scalability, improved data security, faster production and to lower operational cost. However, due to the dynamic nature of identities and account permissions in the cloud, their governance, control and management of business access to critical data prove to be cumbersome processes often hindering progress. Additionally, as a consequence of continuous scaling efforts, managing access to identities in multi cloud environments becomes an even greater challenge due to their increasing complexity and dynamism of the intricate network of interconnected systems, services, and applications within the cloud platforms

Why it’s important?

Legacy methods of managing privileged access to workload resources are getting slow and rigid, operating on static roles and permissions having growing access scope, which leads to difficulties in visualizing and managing them. Nowadays, granularization of permissions is the new approach to achieve the principle of least privilege and Zero Trust architecture. It is important to consider the dynamic permissions and roles associated with identities that have Just-In-Time access to cloud resources and data.

Challenges:

Limited Visibility and Security Risks for cloud accesses
Lack of expertise in multi-cloud teams poses a high risk of security issues and operational challenges.
Balancing velocity of features release versus risk for cloud accesses
Inadequate Centralized Security Management across multiple cloud providers.
Excessive Role-Based Access Control Increases Security Risks.
Dynamic Identity Behaviour and Security Policy Enforcement.
Elevated Risks with Permanent Third-Party Cloud Access.

How can we help?

PwC has a team of experienced professionals who specialize in assisting customers with assessing and designing their Identity capabilities. The team is skilled in security controls, best practices for entitlement management, and PAM architecture. PwC is dedicated to supporting customers in securing access to the cloud.

Gain comprehensive visibility into both human and non-human access and privileges within the cloud environment.
Create a centralized and unified platform for managing identity and access controls across cloud environments.
Reduce attack surface by implementing just in time privileged access controls on cloud infrastructure.
Continuous prevention of security incidents resulting from misconfigured cloud entitlements.
The risk of accidental or malicious permission misuse is reduced by detecting and remediating the over privileged identities.

Approach to embed PAM in an organization

Analyse

Analyse

Assess the current state of PAM

Plan

Plan

Initiate and plan for the implementation/integration of new components, capabilities, processes application and/or endpoints

Improve

Improve

Identify and define continuous improvement processes/procedures

Design

Design

Design PAM use cases
Design PAM processes and solution
Create PAM architecture and design

Deploy

Deploy

Conduct knowledge transfer sessions
Deploy to Production
Go live

Operate

Operate

Day-to-Day operations
Monitor capability effectiveness and performance

Build

Build

Install and configure PAM solution
Build and deploy enhancements

Test

Test

Conduct QA and user acceptance testing
Execute Unit, Functional and DR Testing

Integrate

Integrate

Integrate PAM processes and standards
Integrate PAM with additional tools, such as IAM, SIEM, application infrastructure, etc.

Onboard

Onboard

Discover and create inventory of privileged accounts
Onboard applications, endpoints, and accounts

Cloud Analysis: Navigating a Secure Future

Our team of experts collaborates to conduct a comprehensive assessment of your current cloud security posture. Leveraging the PwC Maturity Model, we analyse assessment data, extract key findings, and provide actionable recommendations.

Cloud Assessment report: Charting Your Path to secured cloud

Our methodology is based on an assessment of business processes, people, and technologies and how they support your desired business outcomes. Our goal is to design program objectives and the target state architecture that is right for your organization. We make it our mission to design practical policies, create a roadmap, support you in choosing the right solutions and implementation. This ensures that your journey to securing privileged permissions accesses is seamless and that PAM policies are embedded in your organization.

Have a peace of mind, check our managed services where we commit to sustained outcomes and continuous improvement.

Customer Identity & Access Management (CIAM) enables organisations to securely capture and manage all sources and forms of customer identity and profile data across all channels and products in a secure and compliant way. CIAM enables a consistent view of all types of external identities and increases customer engagement and loyalty while maintaining security and ensuring privacy compliance.

Workforce Identity & Access Management (WIAM) is the process of creating, maintaining, and managing digital identities as well as regulating the access of employees, contractors, partners, and things to ensure comprehensive security and effective operational control. WIAM capabilities are designed to ensure that identities are secure, compliant and consistent across different applications, systems and platforms while helping businesses become agile, safeguard themselves against data breaches and comply with privacy regulations.

‘Privileged access’ is a term used to designate special access or abilities above and beyond that of a standard user. Privileged Access Management (PAM) allows organisations to secure their infrastructure and applications, run business efficiently and maintain the confidentiality of sensitive data and critical infrastructure by managing privileged access for people (system administrators and others) and machines (systems or applications). As such, PAM helps protect companies against cyberthreats by monitoring, detecting and preventing unauthorised privileged access to critical resources.