CyberArk Tutorial

Today, cybersecurity is the need of the hour in organizations because cyber threats are constantly causing havoc, resulting in significant losses. The need for cybersecurity is even greater for privileged accounts.

CyberArk is a security platform that helps organizations efficiently protect privileged accounts and credentials. In this CyberArk tutorial, we will learn the CyberArk basics and advanced concepts in detail.

Now, let’s have a look.

Table of Contents:

• PAM Overview
• What is CyberArk?
• History of CyberArk
• Why CyberArk?
• CyberArk Benefits
• Industries using CyberArk
• Components
• Architecture
• Implementation
• AI Capabilities
• FAQs

Privileged Access Management (PAM) – An Overview

Before understanding PAM, we’ll take a quick look at what a privileged account is.

A privileged account can access information such as social security numbers, credit card numbers, and PHI. Some of the privileged accounts in organizations include local admin accounts, privileged user accounts, domain admin accounts, emergency accounts, service accounts, and application accounts.

PAM is a cybersecurity strategy that helps you control, monitor, secure, and audit all privileged identities and activities across your IT landscape. The key players in PAM are people, processes, and technology.

Organizations implement PAM to avoid credential theft and privilege misuse. PAM is also known as Privileged Identity Management (PIM) and Privileged Access Security (PAS).

What is CyberArk?

CyberArk is a widely used security tool for protecting privileged accounts through password management. It protects privileged accounts in organizations by automatically maintaining their passwords.

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager - self-hosted 15.0 is the latest version of the CyberArk platform.

Let’s explore more about CyberArk.

• You can store and maintain data by rotating the credentials of all the important accounts using the CyberArk tool. It helps you defend against malware and hacking threats efficiently.
• As a robust security tool, CyberArk is used across industries such as energy, financial services, healthcare, and retail.
• CyberArk is used by about 50% of the Fortune 500 companies worldwide, according to a report by Growjo.
• Many organizations rely on CyberArk's strong capabilities to address their cybersecurity demands.
• Cyberark minimizes the need for additional infrastructure and administrative effort.

Now that you understand what CyberArk is, many professionals choose CyberArk training to gain practical skills—let’s look at its evolution

History of CyberArk

CyberArk is a company headquartered in Petah Tikva, Israel. Its USA headquarters is located in Newton, and it also has a presence in EMEA, Asia Pacific, and Japan. It was founded in 1999 by Udi Mokady and Alon N. Cohen.

Since its inception, the company has focused on helping organizations protect themselves against cyberattacks, and it is now one of the most reputable cybersecurity companies in the world.

As a key milestone, CyberArk became a public company in 2014 and was listed on the NASDAQ.

In recent years, it has acquired companies such as Viewfinity, Conjur Inc., Idaptive, Alero, Zilla Security, and Vaultive. These acquisitions helped CyberArk evolve into a comprehensive identity security platform and strengthened its position in zero-trust security.

Why CyberArk?

Organizations widely use the CyberArk platform to protect their identities from threats. Let’s break down the reasons here.

• CyberArk is a key player in securing critical accounts, including admin, root, and service accounts.
• It stores credentials, SSH keys, privileged accounts, and secrets in a hardened vault, significantly reducing risk.
• You can monitor, log, and audit privileged sessions to ensure compliance and security.
• You can secure application secrets, API keys, and machine identities in devops pipelines using Conjur.

CyberArk Benefits

With strong cybersecurity capabilities, CyberArk provides immense benefits to organizations. Some of these benefits include the following:

• Improves operational efficiency: With CyberArk, you don’t need to track passwords manually. CyberArk automates password monitoring, which significantly saves time.
• Eliminates redundancy: Since CyberArk allows admins to manage and update user privilege policies centrally. It eliminates redundancies in policy updates.
• Reduces risks: CyberArk centrally manages database passwords and ensures they are propagated to all dependent applications and services. This eliminates the risk of broken processes and prevents revenue loss with every password change.
• Enhanced security: CyberArk efficiently protects and manages privileged accounts and SSH keys against potential threats.
• Improved compliance: By leveraging CyberArk, companies can ensure accurate compliance with audit and regulatory requirements.

In summary, CyberArk helps organizations ensure identity security and enhance customer credibility.

Industries using CyberArk

Here is the complete list of industries that widely use the CyberArk platform.

• Computer Software
• Information Technology and Services
• Financial Services
• Banking
• Insurance
• Healthcare
• Retail

CyberArk reports that companies, including Cisco, Coca-Cola, Panasonic, Persistent, and Hippo, use CyberArk to solve complex identity security challenges.

CyberArk Components

The following are the components of CyberArk:

• Digital Vault: The Digital Vault is the most secure place on the CyberArk platform to store your confidential data. Since it is pre-configured, it is readily usable.
• Password Vault Web Access (PVWA): A web interface for managing privileged passwords. As part of password management, you can use PVWA to create new privileged passwords. The interface includes a dashboard that lets you view activity in CyberArk.
• Central Policy Manager (CPM): This component automatically changes existing passwords to new ones. It also provides password verification and reconciliation on remote machines.
• Privileged Session Manager (PSM): The PSM component provides access to privileged accounts from a central point. It also enables a control point to initiate privileged sessions.
• Privileged Session Manager for Web: This component enables companies to achieve a cohesive approach to securely accessing multiple applications, services, and cloud platforms.
• Privileged Threat Analytics: The component continuously monitors the use of privileged accounts in the CyberArk Privileged Access Security (PAS) platform. In addition, it monitors accounts that are not managed by CyberArk and checks for potential threats.
• SDK Interfaces: The SDK interfaces include the Application Password SDK, Application Password Provider, and Application Server Credential Provider.
  • The Application Password SDK eliminates the need to store passwords within applications and enables their central management in the Privileged Access Security solution.
  • The Application Password Provider is a local server that retrieves passwords from the vault and provides immediate access to them.
  • The Application Server Credential Provider interface automatically and securely manages application server credentials stored in XML files.

Related Article: CyberArk Components

Hope that you have gained a good understanding of CyberArk components. Next, we’ll move on to some advanced CyberArk topics.

CyberArk Architecture

At its core, CyberArk comprises multiple components that provide highly secure solutions for storing and sharing passwords within the organization. These components include PVWA, Vault (HA cluster), PSM, PTA, and CPM.

The architecture consists of the following major elements:

• Storage Engine: The storage engine, also called a server or vault, stores the data. It also ensures data security and authenticated, controlled access.
• Interface: The interface communicates with the storage engine and provides access to users and applications. Communication between the storage engine and the interface occurs via the CyberArk vault protocol, a secure protocol.

CyberArk Implementation:

CyberArk implementation can be done in different phases. It includes business and security requirements analysis, scope definition, solution launch and execution, risk mitigation plan, and company-wide execution.

You can get some insights about these phases from the following:

• Business and security requirements analysis: In this first phase, you need to identify specific security requirements, analyze risks, and outline controls. You also need to identify and prioritize privileged accounts, high-value and critical assets, and specify the controls and timelines.
• Scope definition: In the second phase, you need to specify the scope, define the stakeholders, and their responsibilities.
• Solution launch and execution: In the third phase, you will focus on architectural and solution design, as well as solution implementation.
• Risk mitigation plan: In the final phase, a small group of accounts must serve as a pilot to identify issues.

By completing these phases step by step, you can implement CyberArk security solutions in real-time IT environments.

CyberArk AI Capabilities

CyberArk integrates with AI to enhance and automate its identity security and privileged access management processes. It simplifies the detection of anomalies, the identification of insider threats, and the prevention of credential misuse in real time.

Let’s explore more about CyberArk AI capabilities.

• CyberArk CORA AI Chatbot: You can engage with CyberArk services by posting queries using natural language. It helps you perform administrative tasks and quickly set up systems.
• CORA AI functional insights: This feature helps you identify key accounts and remove those that have not been used for a long time.

Overall, integrating AI capabilities with CyberArk is a game-changer for implementing advanced PAM solutions for organizations.

Frequently Asked Questions: 

1. Is it easy for beginners to learn CyberArk?

Ans: Yes, beginners can learn CyberArk with ease. Deepening your knowledge of IT security and password management will strengthen your learning.

2. How long will it take to learn CyberArk?

Ans: You can learn CyberArk within 2–3 weeks. You need to continue hands-on practices further to become a skilled CyberArk professional.

3. Does CyberArk access customer data?

Ans: CyberArk doesn’t access customer data unless it is necessary. It manages only data such as user identities, device information, and activity logs.

4. Does CyberArk support cloud platforms?

Ans: Yes, CyberArk supports both cloud and on-premises platforms. Privilege cloud and identity security are cloud-based solutions, whereas self-hosted PAM is an on-premises solution.

5. What is the scope of CyberArk?

Ans: CyberArk professionals can secure jobs at MNCs with good salaries. According to Glassdoor, CyberArk admins can earn between 4 LPA and 10 LPA in India. ZipRecruiter reports that they can earn between 27,500 USD and 209,000 USD in the USA.

6. Do you provide any additional learning resources?

Ans: Yes, we provide the following e-learning resources.

• CyberArk Blogs
• CyberArk Interview Questions
• CyberArk Quizzes

Conclusion:

We hope that you have learned CyberArk's key features and capabilities in this tutorial. You have also understood the CyberArk architecture, components, and implementation in detail.

If you wish to explore more about the CyberArk platform, you can enroll in a CyberArk course with MindMajix. It will help you gain deep expertise with the CyberArk tool and advance your career.