BeyondTrust Endpoint Privilege Management

Digital transformation across cloud, IoT, AI, and big data expands infrastructures and increases cybersecurity, compliance, and identity risks, making Privileged Access Management (PAM) a critical control set. Key drivers include shared-credential abuse, unauthorized elevation, credential hijacking, misuse on third-party systems, accidental admin mistakes, attestation requirements, and weak endpoints used to reach privileged accounts. Beyond pure security threats, privileged access also creates governance and operational needs: discovering shared/service accounts, tracking ownership through the account lifecycle, enabling single sign-on for administrators, recording and monitoring privileged activity for compliance, and controlling vendor/MSP and cloud administrative access.

Endpoint Privilege Management (EPM) has become especially important as remote work expanded during the COVID-19 crisis, including unmanaged and even shared personal devices. The period also saw a reported 30,000% increase in malware volume early in the pandemic, underscoring how dangerous uncontrolled privilege use from unprotected endpoints can be. Effective EPM must protect both endpoints and servers without adding friction such as extra credentials, while meeting tighter post-pandemic budget constraints and time-to-value expectations.

BeyondTrust’s Endpoint Privilege Management supports Windows, macOS, Unix, and Linux, aiming to stop many zero-day attacks by removing excessive user privileges and applying application control and command filtering. Its core approach uses just-in-time elevation of applications, scripts, or commands (not the user), enabling “Passwordless Administration” by default while optionally adding MFA. QuickStart policy templates claim to cover 80% of common use cases, enabling rapid removal of local admin rights with minimal productivity impact and detailed audit logging for iterative policy improvement. The product integrates with SIEM tools (including Splunk) and ServiceNow, provides dashboards, keystroke logging, and file integrity monitoring on Unix/Linux, and positions itself between traditional antivirus and EDR for blocking malicious code execution.

• Privileged access challenges include abuse of shared credentials, unauthorized use of elevated privileges, and hijacking of privileged credentials by cybercriminals.
• Operational requirements for privileged access include discovery of shared/software/service accounts and lifecycle ownership tracking.
• Auditing, recording, and monitoring privileged activities are required for regulatory compliance.
• COVID-19-driven remote work increased reliance on tasks executed from home, including devices outside corporate networks and even shared personal devices.
• Malware volume increased by 30,000% in the first months of the pandemic.
• BeyondTrust Endpoint Privilege Management is compatible with Windows, macOS, Unix, and Linux.
• Just-in-time elevation in BeyondTrust EPM elevates the application, script, or command rather than the user.
• BeyondTrust claims 77% of critical Microsoft vulnerabilities would be mitigated by removing admin rights.
• QuickStart policies are presented as templates for 80% of known use cases.
• BeyondTrust states those QuickStart policies are based on implementations across over 50 million endpoints.

• “Digital transformation is no longer optional for businesses and organizations if they wish to stay competitive and deliver greater value to customers.”
• “Privileged access is required from the millions of endpoints that form part of extended enterprises.”
• “End users do not need any more barriers to ‘getting the job done’ so avoiding another set of credentials at the endpoint is recommended.”
• “In the datacenter, privileges present a more significant challenge, where sysadmins will routinely require administrative access.”
• “But this is time-consuming, unwieldly, reduces digital productivity, and typically ends up with privilege creep.”
• “BeyondTrust describes this as Passwordless Administration (not to be confused with Passwordless Authentication).”
• “By default, the platform does not need a password from the user, utilizing JIT access.”
• “EPM fills the gap between traditional AV tools and Endpoint Detection and Response.”
• “Graphical dashboards provide insights into all users, with drill down, custom filtering and SIEM integrations.”
• “Endpoint privilege management will only increase in importance.”