Critical vulnerabilities in Privileged Access Management and Privileged Identity Management that enable identity-based attacks and privilege escalation
What This Category Represents
Privileged Access Scope
PAM and PIM systems govern access to the most sensitive resources in your environment. These include administrator roles, critical cloud resources, high-impact applications, break-glass accounts, service principals with elevated privileges, and emergency access workflows.
Attack Enablement
Misconfigurations in privileged access directly enable privilege escalation, persistent admin access, unauthorized role elevation, hidden backdoor accounts, and abuse of emergency identities. This category highlights the most frequent identity-centric privilege escalation vectors.
These misconfigurations represent the highest-risk category in identity security, as they provide attackers with direct paths to administrative control and persistent access across your infrastructure.
Permanent Assignment to Privileged Roles
Always-On Admin Access
Administrator roles granted permanently without expiration dates or time-based restrictions
No Just-in-Time Elevation
Lack of JIT activation mechanisms requiring users to request temporary privilege elevation
Roles Never Removed
Temporary task assignments persist indefinitely after project completion or role change
Attack Impact: Compromised accounts immediately grant attackers always-on administrative privileges without triggering elevation alerts or approval workflows. This remains the single most dangerous PAM misconfiguration.
Lack of Approval Workflow for Admin Role Elevation
01
Auto-Approved Elevations
Privilege escalation requests automatically granted without human review or security validation
02
No Manager Oversight
Missing manager or security reviewer approval requirements for sensitive role activations
03
Single-Level Approval
High-risk roles like Global Administrator lack mandatory second-level approval mechanisms
Detection Gap
Without approval workflows, attackers escalate privileges silently. Security teams lose visibility into unauthorized elevation attempts and cannot block suspicious requests before activation.
Compliance Violation
Automated approvals violate separation of duties principles and regulatory requirements for privileged access governance in frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001, and PCI-DSS.
Break-Glass Accounts Mismanaged
Plaintext Credential Storage
Emergency account passwords stored in unsecured locations, shared drives, or documentation accessible to multiple users
No Monitoring or Alerting
Break-glass account usage not logged, monitored, or configured to trigger immediate security team notifications
Excessive Privileges Beyond Emergency Scope
Accounts granted broader permissions than required for emergency scenarios, enabling unrestricted administrative access
Weak or Missing MFA Protection
Emergency accounts exempt from multi-factor authentication or protected only by password authentication
Critical Risk: Attackers who discover break-glass credentials gain unmonitored, unrestricted administrative access designed to bypass normal security controls. These accounts represent the highest-value targets in identity infrastructure.
Incomplete PIM Alerts and Notifications
67%
Organizations Missing Elevation Alerts
No real-time notifications when privileged roles are activated or assigned
54%
Lack Escalation Monitoring
Privilege escalation attempts and completions go undetected by security teams
41%
No High-Risk Role Tracking
Critical roles like Global Admin activated without triggering security workflows
Blind Spot Creation
Without comprehensive alerting, administrative activity occurs invisibly. Security teams cannot investigate suspicious elevations, respond to unauthorized access, or correlate privileged actions with security incidents.
Detection Delay
Organizations discover privilege abuse only after significant damage occurs, often during forensic investigation of breaches rather than through real-time monitoring and alerting systems.
Expired or Inactive Privileged Identities
1
Contractor Departure
External consultant admin accounts remain active after contract completion
2
Role Change
Employee transitions to lower-privilege role but retains historical admin access
3
Account Dormancy
Privileged identity unused for 90+ days without automatic deactivation
4
Compromise
Attacker discovers and exploits dormant privileged account credentials
Attack Vector: Dormant privileged accounts represent ideal targets because their compromise often goes unnoticed for extended periods. Organizations frequently lack visibility into inactive administrative identities across hybrid environments.
Overprivileged PIM-Managed Groups
Group-Based Escalation
PIM manages security groups with admin-equivalent permissions across cloud resources, applications, and data repositories.
Group membership assignments rarely undergo the same scrutiny as direct role assignments.
Privileged Group Creation
Group granted broad admin permissions
Irregular Review Cycles
Membership not audited quarterly
Attack Exploitation
Attacker gains group membership
Attackers escalate privileges by obtaining membership in overprivileged groups rather than requesting direct role assignments. Group-based escalation bypasses many PIM controls designed for individual role elevation.
No Session Controls on Privileged Elevation
Missing Sign-In Frequency Enforcement
Privileged sessions remain valid indefinitely without requiring periodic reauthentication. Attackers maintain access after initial compromise without triggering additional authentication challenges.
No Device or Risk Conditions
Admin role activation allowed from any device regardless of compliance status, security posture, or organizational trust level. Unmanaged devices gain privileged access.
No Access Context Verification
Privilege elevation permitted without validating location, network, time-of-day, or behavioral patterns. Anomalous activations proceed without additional verification.
Impact: Attackers activate privileged roles from compromised devices, unknown locations, or outside normal business patterns without triggering risk-based authentication or access denials.
Service Principals Allowed to Activate Privileged Roles
Machine Identity Admin Access
Automation frameworks, CI/CD pipelines, and service principals granted permissions to perform administrative operations typically restricted to human identities
No Human-Machine Distinction
Privilege management systems treat machine identities identically to human accounts without specialized controls for non-interactive administrative access
Compromise Amplification
Machine identity compromise leads to immediate cloud takeover. Service principals lack behavioral patterns that enable anomaly detection, making abuse difficult to identify through standard monitoring.
Credential Exposure Risk
Service principal credentials stored in source code, configuration files, or CI/CD systems create multiple exposure vectors. Single compromise grants persistent administrative access without MFA protection.
Permanent privileged roles remain the most common and most dangerous identity misconfiguration. Implement time-bound assignments with maximum durations and mandatory JIT elevation for all administrative access.
2
Isolate Machine Identities
Service principals and automation identities must never be granted admin roles without strong isolation controls. Implement separate privilege management workflows specifically designed for non-interactive identities.
3
Secure Break-Glass Accounts
Break-glass accounts should be monitored with immediate alerting, protected by phishing-resistant MFA, and used exclusively for genuine emergencies. Implement automated rotation and secure credential storage.
4
Enable Comprehensive Alerting
PIM alerts and role activation logs are essential for real-time detection. Configure notifications for all privileged role activations, escalations, and high-risk administrative operations across your environment.