Privileged Access Management

The Privileged Access Management (PAM) service is a critical component of identity management, focused on the storage, access, and management of privileged accounts university wide.

The PAM service provides solutions to the weaknesses that standalone password managers exhibit and safeguards the university from internal and external bad actors.

Using tools provided by Thycotic Secret Server, PAM provides secure, granular access control to privileged accounts accessible from any browser, ensuring that users have access to every password and credential they need – and nothing more.

When maintaining a university-wide ecosystem, preventing unintended access to privileged passwords requires strong access policies. One of the largest areas of concern is the unintended leak of password knowledge through employee turnover and password memorization. Standalone password managers can alleviate this issue, but do not offer password rotation or robust access management. The PAM service provides a solution to:

Password strength and rotation
Shared credentials accessed by multiple users
MFA on accounts shared by groups
Insecure methods of password storage (e.g. storing them in plaintext on a user’s device)
Difficulty of access control

The PAM service is hosted through distributed servers and is accessible on any device through Ohio State log-in credentials, meaning that any secret a user may need is both easily accessed, and still encrypted and securely stored behind multi-factor authentication. In addition, PAM has numerous tools to augment an organization’s secrets, including automatic password rotation, templates and policies, and programmatic implementation through Thycotic’s SDK and the REST API.

What are the advantages?

Administrators can lock important accounts in PAM, and store highly secure passwords to protect the accounts’ integrity.
Secrets can be accessed and shared through secure internet anywhere and anytime you may need them.
Templates and policies – length, complexity, time to live – can be put in place, ensuring that every secret has a strong, secure foundation.
Automatic rotation of service account passwords

What features would I gain?