Privileged Access Management (PAM) is more than “just slapping a vault in place.” A successful CyberArk CorePAS deployment balances people, processes and technology so you hit your security, availability and compliance goals without slowing the business down. This article walks through the six major domains you need to nail, what questions to ask and practical pointers for each.
1. Scoping and Requirements
Why this matters
Knowing exactly what you’re protecting—and how users will interact—is the foundation. Get scoping wrong and you’ll either under-protect critical assets or over-engineer controls that nobody uses.
Key questions
- Which privileged credentials are in scope?
- Local and domain administrator accounts
- Service/application accounts
- SSH keys, API keys and certificates
- Cloud-native credentials (AWS IAM, Azure managed identities)
- What user journeys and automation do we need?
- Just-in-time access for break-glass scenarios
- Automated password rotation for long-lived service accounts
- Session brokering and recording for high-risk targets
- What compliance, audit or regulatory mandates apply?
- ISO27001, PCI-DSS, NIST, APRA CPS 234, ASD Essential Eight
- Required retention periods for audit logs and session recordings
- Reporting needs for SOX or internal board reviews
Practical tip
Run a focussed discovery workshop with application owners, IT operations and compliance teams. Use a shared spreadsheet to map each asset to its owner, risk rating and desired PAM workflow.
2. Logical and Physical Architecture
Why this matters
Design determines resilience, performance and security zones. A blueprint up front saves painful re-architectures later.
Key questions
- High-availability and DR requirements
- Target RTO/RPO and where to locate DR replicas (on-premise vs cloud)
- Vault clustering and Central Policy Manager (CPM) failover design
- Network segmentation
- Placement of Vault, Password Vault Web Access (PVWA), CPM, PSM
- Firewall rules to isolate management, secure-vault and user networks
- Sizing and scalability
- Expected peak concurrent sessions (PSM) and transaction rates (CPM)
- How easily can we add Web Access or PSM nodes as usage grows?
- Certificate and key management
- Use of internal PKI vs public CAs for server SSL/TLS
- Master key rotation process and HSM integration
Practical tip
Draft a reference architecture diagram showing all components, VLANs and firewalls. Review it with your network and cloud teams before any build-out.
3. Security Hardening
Why this matters
Even a hardened PAM platform is only as secure as its host OS, its key ceremony and its administrative procedures.
Key questions
- Vault server hardening
- OS-level CIS benchmarks, disk encryption, host-based firewalls
- Restrict SSH/RDP access to dedicated jump hosts only
- Separation of duties
- Define CyberArk System Owners, Safe Owners, Auditors and Crypto-Officers
- Enforce multi-person key ceremonies (M-of-N splits) for master key operations
- Credential protection
- Mandatory MFA for all privileged logins (including PVWA administrators)
- Encryption of credentials at rest (Vault) and in transit (TLS)
Practical tip
Automate host-hardening with tools like Ansible or Puppet. Keep your playbooks in version control alongside your CyberArk configuration scripts.
4. Integrations and Workflows
Why this matters
PAM doesn’t live in isolation: you’ll integrate with directories, ticketing systems, CI/CD pipelines and more.
Key questions
- Identity and directory integration
- Which directory service (AD/Entra ID, LDAP) and what group-based authorisations?
- How to handle stale or orphaned users during sync?
- Third-party and custom apps
- Use of CyberArk REST APIs or SDKs for automated credential check-outs
- Supported connectors (AWS, Azure Key Vault, Kubernetes, databases, network devices)
- Privileged Session Management (PSM)
- Which protocols need brokering (RDP, SSH, Telnet, HTTP/S)?
- Storage location and retention policy for session recordings
Practical tip
Start with a handful of high-value integrations (e.g. AD and Windows RDP) then expand. Use Agile sprints to roll out connectors incrementally and gather user feedback.
5. Operational Readiness
Why this matters
Day 2 operations—backup, restore, patching, monitoring—make or break your SLA and your security posture over time.
Key questions
- Backup and restore
- Full-system backups of Vault DB, config and PSM recordings on a defined schedule
- Regular restore drills in a sandbox environment
- Patch and upgrade
- Process owner for scheduling CyberArk updates with minimal downtime
- Validation plan for hotfix testing pre-production
- Monitoring and alerting
- Critical metrics (CPU, memory, transaction errors, audit-log health) pushed to SIEM/NOC
- Alert thresholds and automated ticket creation
Practical tip
Integrate CyberArk’s Health Check utility into your monitoring toolchain. Schedule daily automated reports to catch misconfigurations or replication failures early.
6. Governance, Change and Training
Why this matters
Policies and people underpin the platform. Without clear governance and training, users will find workarounds and you’ll lose control.
Key questions
- Policy lifecycle
- Frequency of review for password-rotation intervals and session-recording rules
- Approval gates for new safes or policy changes
- Change management
- Version control and peer review for PVWA and CPM policy objects
- Change-window scheduling and rollback procedures
- Stakeholder training
- Admin vs user-level playbooks and hands-on labs
- Onboarding plans for new teams and periodic refresher sessions
Practical tip
Build self-service guides and short “how-to” videos for common tasks (requesting vault access, checking password history). This reduces help-desk friction and boosts adoption.
Putting It All Together
- Discovery Workshop – Collect answers to each question above in a joint session with stakeholders.
- Reference Architecture – Draft and validate your network, component and integration blueprint.
- Roadmap and MVP – Prioritise quick-win use cases (eg. rotating domain admin passwords) while mapping out a phased rollout.
- Harden, Integrate, Operate – Automate host hardening, build critical connectors, then stand up your backup, patch and monitoring regimes.
- Govern and Grow – Establish ongoing policy reviews, change boards and training schedules to keep your PAM programme on track.
By working through every domain—scoping, design, hardening, integration, operations and governance—you’ll deliver a resilient, user-friendly CyberArk CorePAS platform that meets security and business objectives alike. Good luck, and if you need templates for architecture diagrams, policy checklists or workshop agendas, just shout!
