Addressing the Inadequacies of Role Based Access Control (RBAC) Models for Highly Privileged Administrators: Introducing the SNAP Principle for Mitigating Privileged Account Breaches

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss how RBAC systems fail to protect highly privileged accounts used for system administration. We introduce how Secondary NonAdmin Privileged (SNAP) accounts can mitigate a variety of attacks targeting privileged accounts. Both justification and a methodology for implementing this approach are presented along with case-studies showing how real attacks can be mitigated. Three different variations we have termed i-SNAP, s-SNAP and t-SNAP are compared. Other studies have shown that over 92% of critical vulnerabilities require administrative access and we present multiple casestudies that demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed solution. Also discussed are procedural, technical and educational processes that will increase the effectiveness of this approach. We conclude with a critical assessment of the SNAP approach and include its potential limitations.