Secrets management procurement in Australia: buying for the credentials nobody logs into

Illustrated cover: Secrets management: buying for the credentials nobody logs into. Set the scope first; Static storage or dynamic issuance; Specify the extras separately; Map to Australian obligations; Understand how it is priced; Request evidence

Human administrators are the visible half of privileged access. The other half is machine credentials: API keys, database connection strings, service account passwords, certificates and tokens used by applications, pipelines and scripts. They outnumber human privileged accounts in most environments, they rotate less often, and they are the credentials most likely to be sitting in […]

Email security procurement in Australia: what to require beyond the gateway

Illustrated cover: Email security: what to require beyond the gateway. Know what you already own; Treat authentication as configuration; Specify beyond the platform; Ask for evidence

Email remains the most common way an attacker first reaches an organisation, and it is the control most often bought on brand rather than on requirements. The category has also changed shape. The secure email gateway that sat in front of the mail platform is no longer the whole answer, because most Australian organisations now […]

Backup and recovery procurement in Australia: buying for the day you need it

Illustrated cover: Backup and recovery: buy for the day you need it. Recovery time is the requirement; Define immutability; Test against ransomware; Spot the pricing gaps; Request evidence

Backup is bought on capacity and judged on recovery. That gap is where most of the disappointment in this category lives. A platform can hold every byte an organisation has produced and still fail the only test that counts, which is bringing a named system back inside the time the business assumed it would take. […]

Privileged access management procurement in Australia: what to require from a PAM vendor

Illustrated cover: Privileged access management: what to require from a PAM vendor. What PAM covers, and what it does not; Capabilities to specify separately; What Australian obligations require; How PAM vendors price; Evidence before shortlisting

Privileged access is the smallest population of accounts in an organisation and the largest share of its risk. A domain administrator, a cloud root account, a service account with standing database rights: each one collapses the distance between an attacker landing on a workstation and an attacker owning the environment. Most Australian organisations already know […]