WALLIX Bastion

Digital transformation is expanding organizational attack surfaces through initiatives like digital workplaces, DevOps, security automation, and IoT, creating new risks that must be managed without disrupting business. Privileged Access Management (PAM) is positioned as a critical set of cybersecurity controls because privileged accounts often have unrestricted, insufficiently monitored access that undermines least-privilege principles and weakens individual accountability. Two privileged user groups are emphasized: privileged business users (accessing sensitive business data such as HR, payroll, finance, and intellectual property) and privileged IT users (administering infrastructure via system, software, or operational accounts). Traditional IAM tools are described as insufficient for privileged scenarios such as shared accounts, privileged activity monitoring, and controlled privilege elevation, leading to specialized PAM suites that combine credential vaulting, password rotation, session establishment, and activity monitoring, increasingly augmented by analytics and risk-based monitoring.

WALLIX, a France-based European PAM provider, offers the WALLIX Bastion suite comprising session management, password management, and access management, unified through a single portal. Bastion centers on a secured vault, robust session auditing/recording, automated password rotation, application-to-application password management (WAAPM) to eliminate hard-coded passwords, and discovery of privileged accounts (including local accounts). It uses an agentless approach, with an optional ephemeral session agent for blocking malicious processes, commands, or connections. The platform supports many protocols (RDP, SSH/SCP, HTTP/HTTPS, telnet, VNC) and integrates with LDAP/Active Directory for admin identity management. Advanced monitoring includes four-eyes session duplication, DVR-based recordings with OCR search, and keystroke logging.

Limitations include constrained privilege elevation (no sudo/shell replacement), no endpoint privilege management, no privileged user behavior analytics (noted as planned on the 2019 roadmap), limited cloud/DevOps support, and limited third-party interoperability outside EMEA. Scalability and HA are achieved via additional appliances and centralized administration through Access Manager.

• Emerging technology initiatives such as digital workplace, DevOps, security automation, and IoT expand organizational attack surfaces and introduce new digital risks.
• Privileged business users can access sensitive assets including HR records, payroll details, financial information, and company intellectual property.
• Privileged IT users can access IT infrastructure through system accounts, software accounts, or operational accounts.
• IAM tools are designed for standard user identity and access management and do not address shared accounts, privileged activity monitoring, or controlled privilege elevation scenarios.
• WALLIX is a France-based European provider of privileged access management solutions.
• WALLIX Bastion includes three modules: session management, password management, and access management.
• WALLIX Bastion is available as hardware and virtual appliances and supports multi-tenancy configurations.
• Bastion supports protocols including RDP, SSH/SCP, HTTP/HTTPS, telnet, and VNC.
• Graphical sessions can be recorded in DVR format, and recordings can be searched using keywords and window titles.
• Controlled privilege elevation and delegation management in Bastion is limited to superuser credential injection for SSH clients.

• “To remain relevant, organizations must reinvent themselves by being agile and more innovative.”
• “Emerging technology initiatives such as the digital workplace, DevOps, security automation and the Internet of Things continue to expand the attack surface of organizations as well as introduce new digital risks.”
• “Privileged Access Management (PAM) represents the set of critical cybersecurity controls that address the security risks associated with the use of privileged access in an organization.”
• “The privileged nature of these accounts provides their users with an unrestricted and often unmonitored access across the organization’s IT assets.”
• “Available Identity and Access Management (IAM) tools are purposely designed to deal with management of standard users’ identity and access and do not offer the capabilities to manage privileged access scenarios such as the use of shared accounts, monitoring of privileged activities and controlled elevation of access privileges.”
• “Designed as a web-based platform for providing an integrated privileged access management (PAM) platform, activity recording and monitoring has been the traditional focus and one of the major strengths of the WALLIX Bastion.”
• “The WALLIX Bastion offers an agentless approach that doesn’t require additional client components to be installed on the managed systems.”
• “This includes support for dual control or four-eye principal for session duplication, activity review and intervention in real time.”
• “High-definition auditing of the activities during a privileged user session ensures that every user interaction during the session is recorded and can be subjected to analysis at a later point in time for activity reconciliation or forensic purposes.”
• “The platform is configurable and deployable using a simple, clearly structured and easily comprehensible user interface.”