Framework: The Center for Internet Security (CIS) Top 18 Controls

The remaining safeguards in Control 5 complete the account management lifecycle by focusing on administrative segregation, service account oversight, and centralized control. Safeguard 5.4 mandates that administrative privileges be restricted to dedicated administrator accounts separate from normal user profiles. This prevents the compromise of personal credentials from granting excessive access. Safeguard 5.5 requires maintaining an inventory of service accounts—non-human identities used by applications or automated processes—to ensure that each has a documented owner and validated purpose. These accounts often carry elevated privileges and are rarely reviewed, making them prime targets for exploitation. Finally, Safeguard 5.6 reinforces centralized management, ensuring that account creation, modification, and termination occur through standardized identity services rather than ad hoc system-level administration. Together, these safeguards create a complete identity ecosystem that emphasizes accountability, traceability, and least privilege.

Implementing these measures requires combining technical enforcement with clear procedural discipline. Administrators should use Privileged Access Management (PAM) solutions to handle elevated accounts securely, logging every privileged action for review. Service accounts must be registered, assigned expiration dates, and reviewed quarterly to confirm necessity. Where possible, machine identities should employ key-based or tokenized authentication rather than static passwords. Centralized directories provide visibility across all systems, enabling consistent enforcement of password policies, multi-factor authentication, and deactivation workflows. Audit logs from IAM and PAM tools verify compliance and support forensic investigations. Ultimately, these safeguards transform account management from a fragmented administrative task into a continuous governance process. By ensuring that every identity—human or machine—is documented, validated, and controlled, organizations establish a trusted access foundation that supports the more advanced principles of privilege and authorization found in the next control.
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