Privileged Access Management
Privileged access that protects your critical systems, without the operational overhead.
Credentials sit in a vault. Access is requested, approved and time-limited. Every session is recorded and indexed. We implement it all and operate the platform, so the record is complete whether the question comes from an auditor or an incident.
What privileged access management has to do
Privileged access is quick to grant and slow to evidence.
Administrators need elevated rights on domain controllers, databases, network equipment and cloud consoles, and they need them at the moment the work has to be done. The rights are granted quickly. The record of who used them, on which system, and what they did while they were there is assembled afterwards from logs that were never designed to answer the question.
Elevated access is brokered rather than handed out: credentials stay in the vault, the session is approved and time-limited, and the whole of it is recorded against the person who requested it.
Credentials held, not handed out
Privileged credentials are held centrally and checked out for a task, rather than shared between administrators or stored somewhere they can be copied.
Access with an expiry
Requests are approved and granted for a defined window. When the window closes, the access closes with it, without anyone having to remember to remove it.
Sessions on the record
Every privileged session is recorded and indexed, so a specific action can be found and replayed without anyone watching hours of footage to reach it.
Oversight while it happens
A session can be watched as it runs and ended part way through if what is happening on the system is not what was approved.
Limits inside the session
Commands can be permitted or blocked within a session, so elevated access to a system does not have to mean unrestricted control of it.
Break glass that leaves a trace
Emergency access is available when the normal approval route is not, and it is recorded, retained and reviewable in the same way as everything else.
How the work runs
From agreed scope to a platform we run.
The stages below are the shape of a typical implementation. Durations depend on the size of the estate, the number of systems in scope and how quickly approvals move, and they are confirmed at scoping rather than assumed.
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01
Planning and scope approval
Systems in scope, account types, approval routes and the definition of done are agreed and signed off before anything is built. This is where the arguments happen, and it is cheaper to have them here.
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02
Platform configuration
The cloud instance is stood up and configured, with distributed engines deployed inside the network wherever the systems being managed sit on-premise.
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03
Architecture and structure
Folder structure, secret templates, roles, policies and approval workflows are designed around how the organisation actually delegates work, rather than around the product's defaults.
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04
Implementation
Accounts are discovered and onboarded, sessions are brought under management, and every control agreed at scoping is tested against the systems it is meant to cover.
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05
Training and move to service
Administrators and approvers are trained, documentation is handed across, and the platform moves into the running service with named contacts and a monthly review.
What the service covers
Built, run and evidenced.
Implementation on the right platform
Vault, approval workflows and session management designed around how your organisation delegates work, then built and tested. On the platform that fits the estate, or on the one you have already bought.
The platform run as a service
Day-to-day operation, health and upgrades handled by the team that built it, with named account and project managers and a monthly service review where incidents are measured against the agreed levels.
Accounts found, onboarded and retired
Privileged accounts across servers, databases, network equipment and cloud consoles are discovered and brought under management, and privileged access is added and removed as people join, move and leave.
Evidence when it is asked for
Session recordings retained and indexed, standard reporting on who held what access and when, and support in producing the record when an auditor, a regulator or an incident review comes looking for it.
Why this is hard
The tool is the easy part.
Every privileged access platform on the market does broadly the same things. It holds credentials, brokers sessions and records them. Choosing between them takes weeks. Making one true for a particular organisation takes months, and keeping it true does not stop. That work is procedural far more than it is technical, and it is where these programmes are won or lost.
Agreeing who should hold what
Roles, approval routes and segregation of duties have to be settled with the people who own the systems, not assumed from the product's defaults. On one enterprise identity programme, 70% of the deliverables were documents, and every one of them was signed by a stakeholder.
Onboarding accounts that resist it
Service accounts nobody claims, network equipment that was never built to hand over its credentials, applications with passwords embedded in scripts. Discovery is quick. Bringing each one under management without breaking what depends on it is not.
Approvals people will use
A control that stands between an engineer and a system at two in the morning has to be quick enough to use under pressure. When it is not, people find another way in, and the vault becomes a record of the access nobody needed urgently.
Keeping it true afterwards
New systems arrive, teams reorganise, people leave, and auditors ask for evidence covering periods nobody was thinking about at the time. None of this is project work. It is a standing job, and it is the one most organisations underestimate.
The platform is bought once. This work happens every week, which is why it belongs to a service rather than a project.
Expertise
Building and running privileged access programmes that make you harder to breach and faster to recover.
Privileged access is where identity programmes are won or lost, and it is the part most providers leave to the customer. It is slow, detailed work: agreeing who should hold what, getting approval routes to a state people will actually use, onboarding accounts across systems that were never designed to give them up, and keeping all of it true as the organisation changes. This is a specialism rather than a line on a service catalogue.
Large organisations whose identity and privileged access we have modernised
Availability sustained on a geographically distributed identity platform
Certified professionals in the security architecture domain, available to the engagement
Operations centres across the UK, South Africa and India, so the service follows the clock
Accredited across the platforms that matter
- Delinea
- BeyondTrust
- CyberArk
- Saviynt
- Oracle
- SailPoint
- Okta
- Microsoft
We are accredited on all of them, so we are as likely to tell you to keep what you have as to replace it.
Evidence
Elevated access, without the added exposure.
Privileged access implemented and then operated, rather than handed over at go-live. Reference conversations can be arranged.
Privileged access, held under one agreement
A trust services provider has run privileged access through Talanos since 2022, with the platform licence, the hosting and the support held together rather than split between a reseller and an integrator.
Renewed for a further three-year term at fixed rates
Independently assessed
Common questions
What people ask before they start.
Do we have to buy a new platform?
No. Where a privileged access platform is already in place, we work with it. Where one is not, we recommend the platform that fits the estate rather than the one we sell most of, and we implement across the major products in the market.
Do you build it, or run it?
Either. Some clients take the platform on themselves once it is built and trained out. Others keep it with us as a managed service, with named account and project managers and a monthly review where incidents are measured against the agreed service levels. The decision does not have to be made at the start.
How long does an implementation take?
A typical implementation runs to around twenty weeks from scope approval to the platform moving into service, with the longest stretch spent onboarding accounts and testing controls. The real answer depends on the number of systems in scope and how quickly approvals move inside your organisation, and it is confirmed at scoping rather than assumed.
What happens to the session recordings?
Sessions are recorded, indexed and retained for the period agreed with you, so a specific action can be found and replayed without trawling. Retention, access to the recordings and who is allowed to review them are all set during the architecture stage, alongside your own data retention policy.
What happens if we want to move the service elsewhere?
You get what you need to move, and it is written into the contract rather than negotiated at the end. Systems and procedures documentation prepared so another supplier or your own team can pick the service up, any open incidents, a current licence inventory, and time with the engineers who ran the platform for knowledge transfer.
Intellectual property developed while building and running your service is held jointly, and both sides carry on using it after the contract ends. Training runs on a train-the-trainer basis for the same reason, so the knowledge sits inside your organisation rather than with one person.
Ready to talk
Start with the accounts you already have.
A scoping conversation covers the systems in scope, the accounts that need bringing under management and what the evidence has to prove. It takes an hour and it does not commit you to a platform.