The Principle of Least Privilege Explained

The principle of least privilege is a security architecture that grants each entity the minimum system resources and authorizations needed to perform its function. It aims to protect against compromised identities by limiting their permissions to key apps and data, reducing the "blast radius" from an attack. However, achieving least privilege in real-world scenarios is challenging due to scale, complexity, visibility, and productivity concerns. Many organizations struggle with privilege sprawl, which leads to technical debt or access debt. Manual access reviews are often ineffective at meaningfully reducing excess privileges. To effectively implement least privilege, organizations need identity-to-data visibility, effective access reviews, and privilege automation. Veza is an Identity Security platform that helps achieve least privilege by providing granular permission visibility, continuous monitoring for excess privileges, enabling intelligent access reviews, and offering out-of-the-box access intelligence to fix misconfigurations and apply best practices in role-based access control (RBAC).