Manage privileged access as a lifecycle: identify who and what can perform administrative actions, restrict when those rights are used, authenticate administrators strongly, monitor privileged activity, and remove access when it is no longer needed. The exact controls should reflect your organization’s risk, applicable requirements, and the capabilities of the systems being administered.
1. Define what counts as privileged access
Privileged access is any account, role, or identity that can administer systems, change security settings, manage other users, or reach sensitive information beyond ordinary business needs. It is not limited to accounts named “administrator.” Cloud control planes, security tools, remote-access services, and service identities can carry significant authority too.
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Start by defining which roles may receive privileged access, who approves it, and which systems or functions are in scope. Keep an inventory that connects the identities to the authority they have and the systems they can administer. Include human administrator accounts, privileged groups and roles, service identities, remote administration paths, and deployed MFA authenticators. CISA’s Identity and Access Management: Recommended Best Practices for Administrators calls for an authenticator inventory; NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3 ties privileged-account restrictions to defined personnel or roles.
2. Separate administrator work from everyday work
Give administrators distinct accounts for privileged tasks and retain standard accounts for routine work such as email, browsing, and business applications. Restrict privileged accounts to authorized personnel or roles, and require administrators to use non-privileged accounts for non-security functions and information. NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3, controls 03.01.06 and 03.01.07, addresses these restrictions and the logging of privileged functions.
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This separation reduces the chance that routine activity exposes administrative credentials or gives an attacker an easy path to security controls. Review privileged group membership and permissions as roles and responsibilities change.
3. Require strong authentication for privileged access
Require multifactor authentication (MFA) for privileged accounts and remote access to the organization’s network. CISA’s Require Multifactor Authentication guidance says to confirm that both categories require MFA. Prefer phishing-resistant authentication for elevated accounts where the systems and identity provider support it. CISA identifies physical security keys as a strong MFA option, but a key’s protocol and compatibility with your identity provider and policy must be checked before deployment.
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Choose authenticators by considering:
- Phishing resistance and supported protocols.
- Compatibility with identity providers, administrator endpoints, and remote-access systems.
- Enrollment, recovery, and spare-authenticator procedures.
- User support burden and the scale of deployment.
Maintain an inventory of deployed authenticators, routinely test the MFA infrastructure, and keep it patched. NIST’s Multi-Factor Authentication guidance was updated January 5, 2026; use current platform documentation and policy requirements when selecting specific methods.
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4. Limit how and when elevated access is used
Grant only the permissions needed for a task, and use them only for that task. Where supported, just-in-time access can provide privileges for a defined period rather than leaving broad administrative rights permanently assigned. Establish an approved elevation process for exceptional or urgent work, with clear ownership and a way to record why access was granted.
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Harden the paths administrators use. NIST’s guidance on EO-critical software gives examples including dedicated hardened platforms verified before use, unique administrator identification, and proxying and logging administrative sessions. These are implementation examples for that guidance’s scope, not a universal requirement for every organization. Select administration paths according to the sensitivity of the systems and the controls your platforms support.
5. Log and monitor privileged activity
Prevent non-privileged users from executing privileged functions, and log the execution of those functions. NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3, control 03.01.07, states: “Log the execution of privileged functions.” Where feasible, capture enough session and identity context to investigate what happened, who performed the action, and which systems or settings were affected.
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Establish baselines for privileged-user activity and alert on meaningful deviations, such as unexpected account creation or permission changes. CISA’s administrator IAM checklist recommends baselining privileged-user activity. Avoid treating every unusual event as malicious: CISA cautions that an off-hours administrator login, for example, may have a legitimate incident-response explanation. Confirm context before taking disruptive action when the situation allows.
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Compare privileged access with current duties and least-privilege needs on a regular schedule. Set the cadence based on risk, policy, regulation, and operational realities; there is no universal review interval established by the cited sources. NIST’s 2016 Best Practices for Privileged User PIV Authentication gives automated access reviews “for example, every 30 days” as an example, not a requirement for every organization.
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When a person changes roles or a business need ends, remove or adjust the associated access and update the inventory. NIST’s PIV guidance and its MFA guidance support reviewing and removing access as circumstances change. Assign an owner to confirm that these changes reach all relevant systems, groups, and authentication records.
7. Decide whether privileged access management tooling is warranted
CISA’s 2023 advisory, Red Team Shares Key Findings to Improve Monitoring and Hardening of Networks, recommends considering privileged access management (PAM) to manage access to privileged accounts and resources; PAM can also log and alert on use. Tooling may help when the number of systems, identities, or workflows makes manual controls difficult to operate consistently, but it adds integration and operational responsibilities.
Evaluate a PAM approach against the environment it must support:
- Which systems, cloud services, and privileged identities it covers.
- Whether it supports session brokering or recording and just-in-time access.
- Approval workflows, audit evidence, and export of logs to monitoring systems.
- Availability, emergency access, and recovery procedures.
- Integration effort, ongoing administration, and user support burden.
Treat any password vault associated with PAM as a high-value asset: restrict access to it and monitor its use, as CISA cautions. A tool does not replace clear account ownership, approval rules, or periodic permission reviews.
How to make the program workable
Assign owners for the inventory, approvals, authentication, monitoring, and access reviews. Document exceptions and their expiration or review conditions, and ensure incident-response procedures account for legitimate emergency administration. Apply controls proportionately: NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3 is specifically for protecting Controlled Unclassified Information in nonfederal systems and organizations, not a universal legal mandate for every organization. Other organizations should map their obligations and risk profile to the platforms and controls they actually operate.
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