Least Privilege
Description
Employ the principle of least privilege, allowing only authorized access necessary for users to accomplish assigned tasks.
⚠️ Risk Impact
Overprivileged accounts dramatically increase blast radius of any compromise.
🔧 Remediation
Review and restrict IAM roles. EchelonGraph automatically detects admin and editor roles on service accounts.
💀 Real-World Attack Scenario
A federal system had 23 service accounts with 'project/owner' level access. When one service account's key was compromised through a supply chain attack on an open-source dependency, the attacker had owner-level access to the entire project — including the ability to modify IAM policies, read all data stores, and create persistent backdoors.
💰 Cost of Non-Compliance
NIST AC-6 violations are the most common FISMA audit finding. Average remediation cost: $800K. FedRAMP AC-6 requirements are strictly enforced — no compensating controls accepted.
📋 Audit Questions
- 1.Which accounts have admin/owner-level permissions?
- 2.What is the justification for each elevated permission?
- 3.Are elevated permissions time-limited?
- 4.Show the output of a least-privilege analysis tool.
🎯 MITRE ATT&CK Mapping
⚡ Common Pitfalls
- ⛔Using broad permissions for convenience ('it works with Owner, let's just use that')
- ⛔Service accounts accumulating permissions over time without review
- ⛔Not using IAM recommender tools to right-size permissions
📈 Business Value
Least privilege is the most impactful single control for reducing breach blast radius. It's the cornerstone of Zero Trust architecture and is mandatory for federal contracts.
⏱️ Effort Estimate
16-40 hours for organization-wide least privilege review
EchelonGraph identifies overprivileged accounts and recommends minimum required permissions
🔗 Cross-Framework References
Automate NIST 800-53 AC-6 compliance
EchelonGraph continuously monitors this control across all your cloud accounts.
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