Introducing Account Discovery: Full Visibility and Control over Privileged Accounts

Overlooked privileged accounts represent a serious vulnerability for organizations of all sizes. Syteca’s account discovery feature empowers you to minimize this vulnerability by detecting all hidden privileged accounts and allowing you to manage them with precision. 

In this post, we’ll explore the benefits of account discovery and take a look at how this feature can strengthen your cybersecurity defenses and protect sensitive data.

Why is account discovery so important?

Unmanaged privileged accounts, also known as ghost accounts, can linger when employees leave your organization, contractors finish projects, or admins upgrade systems without deactivating old accounts. When these accounts slip under your radar, they create security gaps that attackers can exploit.

Cybercriminals specifically look for ghost accounts to move laterally within systems, steal sensitive data, and escalate privileges without raising alarms. The results can be significant, ranging from data breaches, intellectual property theft, cybersecurity compliance violations, and reputational and financial losses. 

This is where account discovery steps in as a powerful safeguard. 

Increased visibility

With account discovery, you can achieve 360-degree visibility of all privileged accounts within your IT infrastructure. A centralized view allows for easy monitoring, helping you maintain strict oversight and accountability for all users with privileged access rights.

Enhanced security

Account discovery reduces your attack surface by ensuring that only essential accounts remain active. This minimizes entry points for malicious actors, reducing the chance of privilege escalation and lateral movement within your network.

Streamlined compliance

Account discovery provides full control over all privileged access points within your network, helping your organization meet the requirements of the GDPR, HIPAA, NIS2, PCI DSS, and other cybersecurity standards, laws, and regulations.

Improved operational efficiency

With Syteca’s account discovery, you can automate the identification and onboarding of all accounts with elevated access rights, reducing the need for time-consuming manual processes. This efficiency frees up your IT team to focus on other important tasks.

Stronger access management

Account discovery allows you to maintain appropriate access levels by continuously discovering accounts with elevated privileges and adjusting them based on defined user roles and the principle of least privilege. You can also ensure that former employees’ permissions are promptly removed.

Let’s take a look at the capabilities Syteca’s account discovery offers in detail.

Key capabilities of Syteca’s account discovery feature

Syteca’s account discovery offers the following key capabilities to help you gain visibility into all privileged accounts and maintain control over elevated access rights within your IT environment:

Automated discovery. Set up automated network scanning to detect privileged accounts. Automated scanning ensures that no privileged account goes unnoticed, helping you maintain continuous security without additionally burdening your IT team.

Multi-domain discovery. Customize discovery rules to scan multiple domains, organizational units, or user groups based on your unique structure and security needs. This flexibility allows for comprehensive monitoring across even the most complex networks.

Centralized task management. View all detected privileged accounts in one place. Under the Privileged Accounts tab, you can find all discovered privileged accounts along with their statuses — managed, unmanaged, or expired.

Flexible onboarding. Onboard discovered accounts individually or in bulk to reduce administrative workloads and quickly bring all accounts under control. When onboarding accounts, you can choose between manually setting passwords or generating them automatically. You may also opt to enable regular password rotation.

Real-time notifications. Receive email notifications about newly detected privileged accounts. Timely notifications can help your security staff take swift action before unmanaged accounts are exploited.

Granular permissions. Control who can access and manage account discovery data by setting specific permissions for team members to ensure that only authorized personnel handle privileged account information.

Detailed audit logs. Track every action taken within account discovery through comprehensive audit logs. Get a clear record of activity to support accountability and compliance efforts.

“Our account discovery feature empowers organizations to take full control of their privileged accounts, minimizing security blind spots and improving operational efficiency.” 
Alexandr Dymov, Product Manager at Syteca

Manage privileged accounts and control access with Syteca PAM 

Account discovery is the latest addition to Syteca’s privileged access management (PAM) solution that provides organizations with complete control over their privileged accounts and access management via:

• Endpoint access control
• Password management
• Identity and access management
• Privileged session recording

Syteca can help you implement an effective privileged access management strategy that covers the entire lifecycle of privileged accounts — from initial discovery and onboarding to ongoing monitoring, management, and secure deactivation.

Conclusion

Account discovery along with comprehensive privileged access management is a foundational step toward protecting your network, assets, and data from hidden threats. To learn more about how Syteca can strengthen your organization’s security posture, follow our blog.