Privileged Accounts Protection with Multi-factor Authentication

Abstract

Identity protection for securing digital environments is of paramount importance to all companies using digital infrastructure. This thesis was a study of building the recommendations for improving the protection of organization's most critical user accounts in the on-premises infrastructure with additional layers of authentication. Improving (legacy) companies digital credentials protection is one step in providing secure digital infrastructure. In this process, it is necessary to balance the level of security and usability carefully with the value of the privileged account(s).

This work is a combination of literature survey and applied action research, aiming to provide recommendations for the organization in their approach to implement multi-factor authentication (MFA). This work resulted in specific guidelines for (i) privileged account protection, and (ii) MFA selection.

The expectation of this study was also to increase the knowledge of the subject in organization. This research gives the organization the capabilities to implement improvements to its environment in accordance with the lines and recommendations presented in the results of the work.