| This requirement is intended to limit exposure due to operating from within a privileged account or role. The inclusion of role is intended to address those situations where an access control policy, such as Role Based Access Control (RBAC), is being implemented and where a change of role provides the same degree of assurance in the change of access authorizations for both the user and all processes acting on behalf of the user as would be provided by a change between a privileged and non-privileged account.
Audit of privileged activity may require physical separation employing information systems on which the user does not have privileged access.
To limit exposure and provide forensic history of activity when operating from within a privileged account or role, the application must support organizational requirements that users of information system accounts, or roles, with access to organization defined list of security functions or security-relevant information, use non-privileged accounts, or roles, when accessing other (non-security) system functions.
If feasible, applications should provide access logging that ensures users who are granted a privileged role (or roles) have their privileged activity logged.
DBAs, if assigned excessive privileges, could perform actions that endanger the information system or hide evidence of malicious activity. |
