Your IT admin holds the keys to your entire business network. Your finance director can access every bank account. Your HR team can access everyone’s personal information. Now ask yourself: do you know what these privileged users are doing with their access? For most SMBs, the answer is no, and that’s a problem cybercriminals are eager to exploit and a reason why privileged user monitoring has become essential for businesses of all sizes.
The Dangers Lurking in Privileged Accounts
To understand the dangers lurking in privileged accounts, it’s important to first understand the main types of privileged accounts that exist in every small business. We can roughly group them into three major categories:
- Master key holders: IT administration accounts wield complete control over your technology infrastructure—an all-access pass to every digital door in your business. This includes domain administrators who can access all workstations and servers, local administrators managing specific systems, and application administrators controlling business software.
- Digital service agents: Running silently in the background, automated service accounts act as behind-the-scenes operators that handle essential tasks like backing up data, running scheduled reports, or syncing information between systems. While less visible than human users, service accounts are prime targets for cybercriminals because they often have extensive permissions and run without direct oversight.
- Business power users: Senior staff members who need elevated access to perform their roles represent another important category of privileged accounts. While these users don’t have complete system control like IT administrators, they hold privileged access to core business operations and sensitive data, and their accounts are typically not as heavily defended as admin accounts.
The consequences of insufficient privileged account protection then vary dramatically based on which type of account falls into the wrong hands. A compromised master key holder account, for instance, can lead to complete system takeover. That’s exactly what happened to a Florida water treatment facility in 2021 when attackers gained access to a shared administrative account and attempted to poison the water supply by altering chemical levels.
Unfortunately, what happened in Florida isn’t a rare example of what can happen when privileged accounts are poorly protected. A comprehensive survey by Delinea (formerly Centrify) found that privileged account abuse is the leading cause of data breaches, with 74% of breaches involving access to a privileged account.
Smaller businesses and organizations are just as vulnerable to this threat as large enterprises—perhaps even more so, since they often lack the robust security measures and monitoring capabilities that bigger companies have in place.
Traditional Security Measures Aren’t Enough
Many organizations believe they’re protected because they have the basics covered: firewalls, antivirus software, and password policies. But in today’s threat landscape, these traditional security measures fall woefully short when it comes to protecting privileged accounts. Why? Because cybercriminals now have a vast arsenal of techniques to bypass these measures.
Social engineering attacks like phishing have become incredibly sophisticated, targeting emotions rather than technical vulnerabilities. According to a recent IBM report, there’s been a staggering 71% increase in security incidents involving legitimate credentials. In fact, phishing and the use of stolen credentials now account for 91% of all attacks, with 85% specifically targeting sensitive data rather than immediate financial gain.
Even if your own infrastructure is well-protected, attackers can target your supply chain to gain access to your systems. Just look at the SolarWinds breach, where attackers compromised the software supply chain to infiltrate thousands of organizations—including small businesses—that used SolarWinds’ IT management tools. And who knows what cybercriminals will be able to accomplish in five years using emerging offensive AI capabilities to automate and scale their attacks against privileged accounts.
Why Privileged User Monitoring Changes the Game
The reality is that privileged accounts can’t be left unsupervised with an “out of sight, out of mind” approach. They must be monitored 24/7 because every action taken with these accounts has the potential to impact your entire business.
Privileged user monitoring gives you complete visibility into how your most powerful accounts are being used. It tracks and records all privileged user activities in real-time, creating detailed audit trails of who accessed what, when, and why.
As such, privileged user monitoring is like pointing security cameras at your organization’s most sensitive and high-risk areas. It doesn’t prevent access—that’s what your other security measures are for—but it means you can spot suspicious behavior immediately and react accordingly—like an IT admin accessing payroll data at 3 A.M. or a service account suddenly trying to download customer records.
Of course, monitoring alone isn’t enough. It needs to be combined with privileged account management best practices like enforcing the principle of least privilege, implementing just-in-time access, and requiring multi-factor authentication. But monitoring is what transforms these practices from a static defense into an active security strategy that can adapt to emerging threats.
Conclusion
Privileged accounts are the master keys to your digital kingdom, and cybercriminals know it, which means the days of trusting these powerful accounts to operate without oversight are long gone. While no security strategy is bulletproof, privileged user monitoring gives you the visibility needed to catch threats before they spiral into disasters.
As a managed cybersecurity service provider, OSIbeyond can help you implement comprehensive privileged user monitoring alongside other essential security best practices. Contact us today to learn how we can help protect your organization’s most valuable assets from both external threats and potential insider risks.