Administrators need easy access to elevated and mission-critical IT assets that control the operation and function of the broader enterprise. Often, the only way to get that access is to use privileged accounts.

While operating systems have become significantly more powerful in recent years, privileged access has not evolved as quickly. So a single, all-powerful level of access still exists in some enterprises.

Since privileged accounts can be used to bypass standard controls and authorization levels, a person with a privileged account often has unlimited access and, if they become disgruntled, they can inflict significant damage to networks, servers, applications and data.

When damage is done, most organizations face serious challenges in discovery and analysis of the bad behavior. They have problems finding out what went wrong, who did what and when they did it. This opens up a level of risk that has no place in a secure IT environment.