AutoElevate Reduces Security Breaches Through Strong Administrator Privileges

Security breaches are on the rise. The surge of people working remotely has presented new opportunities for hackers to breach systems. They’re stealing data, demanding ransoms, destroying reputations, and leaving costly damage in their wake.

One very effective method of addressing these growing and evolving threats is with a Privileged Access Management (PAM) initiative. CharTec’s Marketing Director, Brandi Reed, recently talked to AutoElevate CEO & President Todd Jones about his company’s PAM solution, which enables users to easily dial in privileges at certain levels rather than being forced to make them all or nothing.

Think about the way Windows works. The operating system allows users to have either administrator privileges or standard ones – there’s nothing in between. Admin users can do anything they want, but standard users are very restricted. This is great in terms of security benefits, but it can be a nightmare when problems crop up for regular users. They may need to interact with technicians but don’t have access to make the changes that are needed to sort the problem.

Many times, standard users will try to take steps to remedy technical problems. They’ll be forced to stop when prompted for admin credentials. This scenario is also true of updates and installs. Being forced to put your work on hold because you have to call someone else to do something that you could have done yourself is extremely frustrating.

Benefits for end-users and MSPs

AutoElevate presents a solution to this problem. It allows for greater customization of which users get access to which areas. This means you can assign some aspects with privileges while keeping other aspects locked down to standard privileges. This is for security reasons.

In addition to reducing frustration for end-users, it also makes life a lot easier for MSPs. When users have to open a ticket and call their service provider every time they need to do something like this, ticket volume grows exponentially. Especially when updates are released to popular software platforms. AutoElevate automates tasks for your MSP’s technicians and helps keep ticket counts down. As you can imagine, this leads to happier customers and a much better user experience. After implementing AutoElevate, MSPs are seeing ticket counts reduced as much as 65 percent.

Solutions like this are essential if you want to retain clients long-term. Especially now that many companies are finding areas to cut their budgets. Businesses that constantly hear complaints from employees about having to call their MSP all the time might start looking for better or cheaper alternatives. AutoElevate reduces these complaints significantly, which gives customer retention a nice boost.

Jones gave us a few examples of cases where this is especially useful. One area is accounting. Accountants get multiple updates each day during tax season and need to call their MSP for help. This usually leads them to complain that they need admin privileges. AutoElevate gives them that without putting people’s sensitive financial information at risk.

Another example he cited is UPS WorldShip. Their app is constantly updated, which changes the login. And admin privileges are needed every time shipping rates are adjusted. This leads to constant pressure on MSPs. It also creates very frustrated users. Yet the alternative of giving warehouse workers full admin privileges doesn’t make a lot of sense either. Once again, AutoElevate provides a perfectly happy medium.

Reducing Security Breaches

2020 was a record-breaking year for data loss, security breaches, cyberattacks. According to Forbes, malware grew by 358 percent and ransomware rose by 435 percent over the year before. Overall, threats are growing increasingly sophisticated. It has never been more important for businesses to safeguard against attacks, and AutoElevate is a great way for MSPs to provide their clients with the type of hassle-free protection and ease of use that keeps them secure and satisfied with their services.

Jones explained that with AutoElevate, it’s not really admin vs. standard privileges; it’s giving people admin privileges that only apply to certain jobs for which they’ve been approved. When presenting this solution to customers, it’s good to frame it as a way of reducing their risk by avoiding the need to give people unlimited admin privileges. Going overboard can go wrong very easily. People will still have admin privileges, but not unlimited ones – they’ll just be able to do the things they need to do without getting into trouble. This also helps avoid situations where certain users feel they’re not being trusted if they aren’t granted admin privileges.

AutoElevate can run in audit mode, which allows you to keep tabs on everything that requires privileges. You can then populate custom rules before you go live with the solution, so it’s not overwhelming and looks much the same to end-users. Then, when something new comes up that you still haven’t set any rules for, you can get notifications on their mobile app. At that point, you’ll decide whether to allow it or not. If you allow it, you can then apply it to all approved users at a certain company or location with the click of a button.

If you are interested in this, or any other service from AutoElevate, you can contact them directly here: https://www.autoelevate.com/contact-us/. Or contact us and we’ll put you in touch with them. AutoElevate is a trusted partner of CharTec. Not only do we use their products, but we recommend them very highly!