Notifications
Clear all
Topic starter
17/08/2026 4:42 pm
TL;DR: Three 2024 breaches could have been avoided with stronger privileged access controls, including JIT access, credential vaulting, and tighter monitoring, especially where compromised accounts enabled lateral movement and data theft, according to Arcon. The lesson is that standing privilege remains a governance failure, not just a tooling gap.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Arcon: 2024 breach analysis of privileged access management gaps
By the numbers:
- Arcon cites three major IT incidents in 2024 that it says could have been avoided with stronger privileged access management.
Questions worth separating out
Q: What breaks when privileged access is not continuously governed?
A: When privileged access is not continuously governed, standing privilege persists, dormant accounts remain usable, and the attack surface expands across human and machine identities.
Q: Why do privileged accounts create outsized breach risk?
A: Privileged accounts can change configurations, access sensitive data, and disable controls, so a single compromise often has disproportionate impact.
Q: How do security teams know whether PAM is actually reducing privilege risk?
A: Measure how much privileged access is permanent, how often elevation is task-scoped, and whether session activity matches the approved purpose.
Practitioner guidance
- Eliminate standing privileged access Review all administrator and elevated service credentials for persistent access that remains active outside a defined task window.
- Scope elevation to commands and sessions Move beyond role assignment and restrict what privileged users can execute at the command layer.
- Adopt just-in-time access for high-risk roles Grant elevated rights only when a task requires them, then revoke access immediately after completion.
What's in the full article
Arcon's full blog post covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- The healthcare breach walk-through with the specific privileged access weakness described in the incident
- The fintech incident details on compromised credentials, data volume, and the dark web resale angle
- Arcon's own PAM control mapping for JIT access, vaulting, and role-based restrictions
- The article's end-to-end examples of how access control and monitoring were positioned against each breach
👉 Read Arcon's analysis of 2024 breaches and privileged access control gaps →
Privileged access gaps in 2024 breaches: what IAM teams missed?
Explore further
View Full Forum → | NHI Foundation Course → | Our Services →
17/08/2026 4:47 pm
Standing privilege remains the breach enabler that PAM still has not eliminated. The article’s examples all point to the same failure mode: privileged access existed for too long, with too much reach, and too little behavioural scrutiny. That is not a product selection issue so much as a governance one, because persistent elevation creates a durable attack surface. The practitioner conclusion is that standing privilege is still the control failure to eliminate first.
A few things that frame the scale:
- 72% of organisations have experienced or suspect they have experienced a breach of non-human identities, according to The 2024 ESG Report: Managing Non-Human Identities.
- Two-thirds of enterprises have endured a successful cyberattack resulting from compromised non-human identities, which shows that identity misuse is already a live operational risk.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Who is accountable when an overprivileged account is compromised?
A: Accountability usually spans identity owners, application owners, and security governance because the failure is rarely one control alone. The organisation must decide who approves privilege, who reviews it, and who is responsible when a role outlives its business need. That ownership should be explicit for every privileged account class.
👉 Read our full editorial: PAM gaps behind 2024 breaches show why privileged access still fails
