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Unmonitored areas within your IT and security infrastructure, particularly those involving privileged accounts, can be a major blind spot. Whether due to accidental misuse, a misconfiguration, or a malicious actor, activity from these powerful accounts can go undetected, leaving IT and security teams in the dark.
One of the top security concerns for IT admins is the misuse of a privileged account, with 19% of them citing it as their biggest worry.
This is why privileged sessions require a structured and systematic approach rather than relying on haphazard methods. The more secure approach is to eliminate blind spots by monitoring and recording privileged sessions within your organization.
Let’s explore what privileged session monitoring entails, key features to consider, and the practical steps.
What Privileged Session Monitoring (PSM) Is and Isn’t
Privileged Session Monitoring is a critical component of any robust privileged access management (PAM) strategy. For IT administrators and security teams, understanding precisely what PSM is and, just as importantly, what it isn’t, is key to its effective implementation.
What Privileged Session Monitoring Is
At its core, Privileged Session Monitoring is a security process and technology designed to record, monitor, and audit the actions of users with elevated privileges. These are the “keys to the kingdom” accounts, such as domain administrators, root users, and others who can make significant changes to an organization’s critical IT infrastructure.
Privileged Session Monitoring provides a complete, video-like record of everything a privileged user does during a session, from the moment they log in until they log out. This includes:
- Real-time observation: Admins can watch a live stream of a session to detect and respond to suspicious activity as it happens.
- Comprehensive recording: Every keystroke, mouse click, and command line action is captured and stored as an unalterable, searchable log. This provides a clear, undeniable history of events.
- Contextual data: Recordings are tagged with valuable metadata, such as the user’s identity, the time of access, and the specific server or application being used.
The purpose of PSM is to create a complete and indisputable audit trail. It’s a proactive measure to deter malicious activity and a reactive tool for forensic analysis in the event of a breach.
What Privileged Session Monitoring Isn’t
To avoid common misconceptions, it’s important to clarify what PSM is not.
It isn’t simple user activity logging. While general logging might record that a user logged in, it doesn’t provide a detailed, step-by-step account of their actions. PSM captures the full context and a visual record of the entire session, which is invaluable for a security investigation.
It isn’t a standalone security solution. Privileged Session Monitoring is an integral part of a comprehensive PAM framework. It works hand-in-hand with other tools like a password vault (for secure credential storage), an access manager (for granting and revoking permissions), and an identity management system. Without these other components, PSM’s effectiveness is limited.
It isn’t about general employee surveillance. PSM is a targeted security practice focused on the small number of high-risk, high-privilege accounts. Its purpose is to protect the organization’s most sensitive assets, not to monitor the day-to-day activities of every employee.
Essential Capabilities for Monitoring Privileged Sessions
A high-quality Privileged Session Monitoring solution goes beyond simply recording a screen. It should offer a comprehensive set of features that provide both real-time visibility and powerful post-session analysis. When evaluating a PSM tool, you should look for the following core capabilities:
Live Monitoring and Alerting
This feature allows security and operations teams to view active privileged sessions in real time. It’s particularly useful for high-risk activities, enabling immediate intervention if a user performs a suspicious or unauthorized action. The system should also be capable of generating automated alerts based on predefined rules, such as when a specific command is executed or a file is accessed.
Tamper-Proof Session Recordings
All sessions must be recorded and stored in a secure, immutable format. This ensures that the records cannot be altered or deleted, maintaining their integrity for forensic investigations and compliance audits.
Searchable Indexing
Recordings are only useful if they can be easily navigated. An effective PSM solution indexes sessions based on metadata (user, time, system) and content (keystrokes, commands, and text from the screen). This allows a security analyst to quickly search for a specific event or command across thousands of sessions.
Forensic and Reporting Tools
The solution should provide a suite of tools for in-depth analysis. This includes the ability to replay sessions at various speeds, generate reports on user activity, and visualize trends over time. These reports are essential for identifying anomalous behavior and demonstrating compliance to auditors.
Session Termination and Lockdown
For high-risk scenarios, the solution should provide the ability to lock down a session, terminate it immediately, or send a warning to the user. This is a critical feature for preventing data loss or system compromise in real time.
Ways to Monitor and Record Privileged Sessions
When deploying a PSM solution, organizations have several architectural options. The choice often depends on the type of privileged access being used, the IT environment’s complexity, and the security requirements.
- Proxy-Based Monitoring
This method is highly effective and widely adopted. A central gateway, often called a “jump server” or bastion host, acts as a secure intermediary between the privileged user and the target system.
The user authenticates with the proxy, which then establishes a connection to the target on their behalf. This architecture centralizes all access and monitoring. The PAM solution on the proxy can then intercept, monitor, and record all session traffic—including protocols like SSH, RDP, Telnet, and others—without requiring any software to be installed on the endpoints.
This simplifies deployment and management across diverse environments.
Key characteristics:
- Centralized control: All privileged sessions are routed through a single, hardened gateway, providing a central point for policy enforcement and auditing.
- Agentless: No software needs to be installed on the target systems, which simplifies deployment and avoids potential conflicts with existing applications.
- Protocol flexibility: This method is effective for a wide range of protocols, from command-line interfaces (CLIs) to graphical user interfaces (GUIs).
Example:
An IT administrator needs to troubleshoot a critical database server. Instead of using their personal credentials to directly log in, they connect to the PAM proxy, which authenticates their identity and then securely establishes an RDP session to the database server. The entire session is recorded and stored on the proxy.
Suggested reading: What to Look for in a Modern PAM Solution
- Agent-Based Monitoring
In this model, a small software agent is installed directly on each privileged endpoint, server, or workstation that needs to be monitored. The agent’s role is to capture all user activity locally and stream the session data to a central management server.
This approach is particularly effective for environments where direct proxying is not feasible, or for capturing activities that occur when a device is offline.
However, agent-based solutions can be more complex to manage and scale, as they require meticulous installation, configuration, and maintenance on every single target system, which can become a significant administrative burden.
Key characteristics:
- Local capture: The agent records activity directly on the endpoint, which provides granular detail and ensures that all local actions are captured.
- Offline capability: Sessions can be recorded even if the endpoint loses its network connection to the central server, with the data being uploaded once the connection is restored.
- Management complexity: This method can be more difficult to manage at scale due to the need for installation and maintenance on every monitored system.
Example: A systems engineer with local administrative privileges on their workstation needs to install a new application. A PSM agent running on the workstation records every command they type and every window they open, sending the session data to the central PAM server for auditing.
- Application-Level Monitoring
This approach provides a highly granular level of control and visibility by integrating monitoring directly into specific applications or databases. Rather than simply recording the entire session, it captures and logs specific commands, queries, and actions executed within that application.
For example, a database access monitoring tool can log every single SQL query run by a database administrator, providing a detailed and precise record of data manipulation. This method is crucial for protecting sensitive data stores where a high degree of precision is required beyond general session recording.
Key characteristics:
- Granular visibility: This method provides unparalleled detail, capturing exactly what commands were executed within a specific application rather than a broad session overview.
- Data integrity: It is ideal for tracking changes to sensitive data, as it can be configured to alert on specific UPDATE or DELETE queries.
- Targeted: It’s a targeted solution for critical applications, ensuring that highly sensitive actions are logged with extreme precision.
Example: A database administrator connects to a financial database. The PSM solution, integrated at the application level, doesn’t just record the RDP session; it logs every SELECT, UPDATE, or DELETE query executed, providing a precise audit trail of data access and modification.
- Network-Based Monitoring
This is a passive and non-intrusive monitoring method. A network appliance is placed on the network to passively listen for and analyze traffic associated with privileged sessions. It can capture and analyze session data from protocols like SSH and RDP as they traverse the network.
While this offers a simple way to gain a broad overview of privileged activity without deploying agents or proxies, it is often less detailed. It may struggle with encrypted traffic and may not be able to capture or contextualize all graphical user interface (GUI) actions, making it less ideal for comprehensive forensic analysis.
Key characteristics:
- Non-intrusive: This method does not require any agents or proxies, making it easy to deploy.
- Broad overview: It provides a way to monitor a large volume of network traffic and identify privileged sessions without specific endpoint configuration.
- Potential limitations: It can be less detailed than other methods, especially with encrypted traffic, and may not capture the full context of a session.
Example: A network security appliance is configured to mirror traffic from a high-value server. It analyzes the raw packets flowing to and from the server, identifying and recording any SSH or RDP sessions for later analysis.
Choosing a PAM Solution That Fits Your Environment
Each of these methods has its strengths and weaknesses, and many modern PAM solutions offer a hybrid approach, combining proxies for remote sessions with agents for local activities to provide a comprehensive layer of security.
An effective privileged access management solution isn’t about implementing a complex, inflexible system. The most valuable tool for your organization is one that feels like a natural extension of your team’s workflow, seamlessly integrating with your existing tools and adapting to your specific environment.
As you plan for privileged session monitoring, look for a solution that prioritizes:
- Pragmatism: It should fit your technical ecosystem, whether you operate on premises, in the cloud, or a hybrid of both.
- Simplicity: It should streamline complex processes, making it easy to manage credentials, grant access, and review audit data.
- Strategic value: It should strengthen your security posture without introducing unnecessary friction or administrative burden.
To learn more about choosing the right PAM solution for your needs, download the PAM for the People eBook. It covers essential priorities, what to avoid, and how to implement PAM simply and affordably.
